Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Bernard Spilka, Bruce Hunsberger, & Richard Gorsuch, The Psychology of Religion. An Empirical Approach.

2nd ed. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1996): 1-43.

Chapter1 T H E PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE AND F U N C T I O N S OF RELIGION My religion is to do good.1 . .. dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion. 2 Things are coming to a pretty pass when3 religion is allowed to invade private life. Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to 4ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. I am an atheist still, thank God.5

WHY THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION? The more important something is to people, the more they will personalize it, and find ways of distinguishing their views from those of others. The "definitions" and approaches to religion quoted above convey some of that flavor. Throughout history the importance of religion, both individually and culturally, has spawned innumerable interpretations of what religion is or should be. In different places and times, various faiths have dominated and then been replaced in paroxysms of war, rebellion, persecution, or simply revelation. Judaism in ancient and medieval Israel gave way to Catholicism, then Islam; it has now, of course, been reestablished in modern Israel. Roman religion was supplanted by Catholicism, which still reigns in modern Italy, but in some other countries Catholicism has been replaced by Protestantism. The latter still prevails in the North American milieu but over time has fractionated into a wide variety of forms, many of which have struggled with each other for converts and for social and political power. History tells us of holy wars, martyrdom, religious conflict, and bigotry, as well as ecumenism and a commitment to the highest human ideals. Still, we cannot confront the nature of faith without psychologically comprehending its many roles within the individual and the community. This is our purpose hereto look at religion from a psychological perspective in general and a social-psychological perspective in particular. Few human concerns are more seriously regarded than religion. People surround themselves with spiritual reference, making it a context in which the sacred is invoked to convey the significance of every major life event. Birth is sanctified by christening, baptism, or circumcision. Marriages are solemnized by clergy, who readily interpret the roles of husband and wife in religious terms. Throughout life, religion mitigates death by associating it with gratifying images of an afterlife where only good prevails or justice demands that evil will be

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

punished with pain and suffering. And, finally, some religious traditions assure the faithful of an ultimate resurrection at the end of time. Why do people expend so much energy on religion? Simply because it is an ever-present and extremely important aspect of the historical, cultural, social, and psychological realities that humans confront in their daily lives. Our goal is to comprehend this complex world of personally significant values, beliefs, experiences, wishes, dreams, and actions. Individual expression in contemporary Western civilization, particularly in the North American milieu, is our primary focus. This approach emphasizes the empirical and scientific; we go where theory and data take us. Since most psychological research has been conducted within the Judeo-Christian framework, such material provides us with the overwhelming majority of our citations. Whenever information is available outside of this realm, we also pursue it. Our role is to search in mind, society, and culture for the nature of religious thinking and behavior; we want to know what religion is psychologically. We urge our readers to keep in mind that there is a big difference between religion per se and religious behavior, motivation, perception, and cognition. We study these human considerations, not religion as such. Before we undertake this immense task, our proper role in this endeavor must be understood. A disclaimer is therefore in order. Let us recognize that psychologists have no calling to challenge religious institutions and their doctrines, God is not our domain; neither is the world vision of churches. We do not enter into debates of faith versus reason, of one theology versus another, or of religion with science. In addition, it is not our place to question revelation or scripture. Psychology as a social and behavioral science is our resource, and we expend our energies on this level of understanding. Beliefs, motivations, cognitions, and perceptions are psychological constructs that, when linked to religion, constitute the basis for a psychology of religion. As psychologists, we must always keep this emphasis and these considerations before us. BASIC QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS Some very basic issues confront psychologists of religion, and, for that matter, anyone who is seriously interested in religion. To begin, there is always the question "What is religion?" We certainly ought to be able to define the object of our concern and interest. However, this raises another question: "Can we offer a definition with which virtually all agree?" As we shall see, this is a very serious problem. Stated differently, we can suggest where one finds religion, and, in a practical sense, indicate what its major features are. A second issue of special consideration to the social scientist concerns the vantage point from which religion is viewed. Anthropologists and sociologists examine religion as an aspect of culture. They want to know its institutional forms; that is, they want to know how churches, synagogues, and temples are formally and informally structured. This leads to an understanding of the place of religion in a social orderits historical, political, social, and economic functions, among other possibilities. Psychologists, especially social psychologists, try to focus on the individual in this matrix of sociocultural forces that are relevant to religion. They want to know what religion means to the individual, how it is expressed, what it does for people, and their thoughts and behavior in relation to its various forms. In the last analysis, however, a psychologist who does not look at personal faith in its societal context will be like a boxer fighting with only one hand. The institutional level and the individual level are inseparable, and the interaction between them means that both must be part of a thoroughgoing psychology of religion. A third issue is the complexity of faith. It would be wonderful if things were as simple

as we desire them to be, but that is not the way of the world. Whenever we look closely at something, it seems to grow in complexity, and personal faith is no exception. To many people, "religion" is one word, and therefore it must mean one thingnamely, what they think it is. It doesn't take rigorous research and observation to tell us that people express their religious inclinations in many different ways. We discuss some of these frameworks, and try to show the intricacies of religious belief, experience, and behavior. As Oscar Wilde put it, "The truth is rare, and never simple."6 A fourth concern deals with that most basic question, "Where does religion come from?" We would like to know the human sources of religious impulses and needs. Here we examine the roles of theorized "instincts"genetic bases of faith, learning, and habit. On a higher plane, we need to show how religion defends and protects people, while also stimulating growth and self-realization. Finally, we introduce in broad outline a point of view regarding how men, women, and children relate to their faith. People's personal religion is not an isolated thing; it concerns how they perceive and deal with themselves, others, and the world. The stress is on personal meaning, and on how it maintains and enhances people's sense of control and self-esteem. We therefore feel it is necessary to unify as many of the research findings in the psychology of religion as we can by means ot a theoretical framework. It may be that certain conceptualizations are most appropriate to specific aspects of the overall field. Other theories may be more broadly applicable. The principle that we wish to embrace is that thousands of isolated studies exist, and they need to be brought together in one or more consolidating frameworks. Our knowledge has to be meaningfully ordered, and theories do just that. They tell us what factors or variables may or may not be pertinent when certain problems and issues are examined. Psychologist Kurt Lewin is reported to have said that "there is nothing as practical as a good theory." Theories are the way we have of organizing our thoughts and ideas so that the data we collect make sense. In fact, even theologies can serve as psychological theories. 7 The theories we hold are "open"; they are always amenable to new information. To close our minds is the most impractical thing we can do. Our approach is therefore both theoretical and empirical, because neither aspect by itself is meaningful without the other. Emphasizing a theoretically informed empirical approach does not mean that research and observations are made in a value-free vacuum. Humans are valuing beings, and if there is a specific human nature, it may be to act on valuesto accept what is liked and reject what is disliked. People's interests complement their biases and prejudices, and religion is an area that people do not deal with dispassionately. Our problem as empirical scientists is to carry out research without letting our biases affect the outcome. The sociologist C. Wright Mills is reported to have affirmed this position by declaring, "I will make every effort to be objective, but I do not claim to be detached." As we will see, it is often not easy to remain "detached." Toward the end of this chapter, we offer more specific theoretical guidance. We raise the foregoing issues in an effort to clarify how psychologists empirically study religion. The word "empirical" is crucial. It means (1) reliance on observation, and (2) the acquisition of knowledge that is objective. It is therefore based on the scientific method. We want information that is public; the findings of research should be understandable by all. A second requirement is that the data be reproducible: Each person can conduct his or her own research, and, ideally, can replicate results. More specifically, the same findings should result from studying the problem in the same way. This is the approach of science. It is a way of conveying an exciting and fascinating appreciation of the nature and place of religion in people's lives. This path is not always an easy one to follow, but it is the orientation with which we hope our readers will become acquainted in the following pages.

DEFINING RELIGION: IS IT POSSIBLE? The famous theologian Paul Tillich harshly called upon all of us to clarify our muddled thinking about religion when he observed: There is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions, and questionable definitions than the word "faith." It belongs to those terms which need healing before they can be used for the healing of man. Today the term "faith" is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternatively skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender, rejection of genuine religion and subjection to substitutes.8 Despite his unhappiness, Tillich could not find a substitute for "the reality to which the term 'faith'"9 refers, and he devoted a volume to its exposition. We are confronted with a similar task, but our method and approach are different, and we hope that they will help to clarify Tillich's "reality." Social scientists and religionists have teased out every abstraction, nuance, and implication in each word in any definition of religion that has ever been offered or is likely to be created. We therefore fully agree with the sociologist J. Milton Yinger that "any definition of religion is likely to be satisfactory only to its author." 10 Nevertheless, later, in a noteworthy book, Yinger struggled with the problem of definition in a very scholarly manner for some 23 pages. "It may have been a similar frustration that much earlier caused a noted psychologist of religion, George Coe, to state: 1 purposely refrain from giving a formal definition of religion... partly because definitions carry so little information as to facts; partly because the history of definitions of religion makes it almost certain that any fresh attempts at 2 definition would necessarily complicate these introductory chapters.' We do not feel that the situation has basically changed in the eight decades that have passed since Coe took his stand. We can, however, accept the guidance of another scholar who claimed that "religion, like poetry and most other living things, cannot be defined. But some characteristic marks may be given."13 Let us therefore avoid the pitfalls of unproductive, far-ranging, grand-theoretical, general definitions of religion. Since we must still know what we are talking about, we utilize other definitions about which there can be little or no argument. These yield clear criteria, and are termed "operational definitions." They are discussed at length later. Where Do We Find Religion? Since we are not going to define religion theoretically, we might consider the "place" or "location" of religion. This should provide some focus in terms of where to look in order to increase our understanding of faith, both individually and collectively. The simple answer is to join all of those who claim that religion is to be found everywhere there are people; it is thus universal.14 This seems to make sense, but if we can't arrive at a definition of what religion is, how do we know that it is universal? There is, moreover, some evidence that those who hold this "universalist" hypothesis enter the fray with ideas that are conditioned by Western culture. They then select the categories with which they are familiar, go out and look

for these in other cultures, and somehow always manage to find what they are looking for.15 Though they may be right, we do not know whether the religion they define as existing within another society is so defined by the members of that group. Maybe we need to have anthropologists from, say, various African or Asian cultures, and to listen to their interpretations. Religion might then take on quite a different character, but so far anthropology and the other social sciences, including psychology, are Western creations. Non-Western peoples may feel that they make little or no sense. We can well argue that, despite our scientific pretensions, we are often hardly objective and free of our values. In any event, believing that religion is universal is not much help, so we may have to accept a different perspective on its "location." Staying, however, within our own bounds and intellectual limitations, we must recognize that we may find religion either "inside" a person or "out there" in a social order. But even this distinction may be too pat, too artificial, too simple an answerbecause, as we have noted, person, culture, and society are inseparably related. There can be no individual independent of the environment, and even to conceive of an environment presupposes a person within it. The environment about which we are concerned is social, cultural, and historical. Just as people are products of their biological heritage, so they have internalized a wide variety of sociocultural influences. The language people use shapes their thoughts as much as they are molded by the past. To paraphrase one noted social scientist, the success and failure of individual men and women are problems of history, and this history includes some thousands of years of religious influence.16 Western culture gives us some leeway, and we are often rather arbitrary and expedient in what we choose to do. Just as we can view the person from many perspectivesbiological, anthropological, sociological, and psychologicalso we can claim that there are both "outside" and "inside" perspectives on religion. The "Outside" Perspective The "outside" or external point of view marks the approach of the sociologist or anthropologist. Religion is seen as an institution, a major element of culture that is defined in terms of some supraindividual group, category, or organizationa church, sect, or cult; the "faithful," the "believers," the "chosen." This collectivity has a history to justify its existence, and that history is associated with theological doctrines; the Bible or other sacred writings; and church dogma, liturgy, ritual, and whatever practices and beliefs the group considers spiritually meaningful. From a psychological point of view, this is the context for individual religious expression. It is the foundation for one's religious beliefs, as well as the reference for acceptable or unacceptable thinking and behavior that every religious system advocates as the basis of living "the good life." Even though psychologists are not as a rule involved in the study of faith from this "outside" or external perspective, it is nevertheless indispensable to any understanding of religion. The "Inside" Perspective Now we enter the realm of the psychologist of religion. The essential point here is that psychologists of religion do not study religion per se; they study people in relation to their faith. This is what the humanist and religionist might term the domain of "inner experience" and "the perception of the infinite," respectively. Though more objective psychologists have not

avoided the realm of religious experience, they stress religious beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge. For example, the 19th-century philosopher/ethnologist Max Muller focused on the individuality of faith when he saw religion as "the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man."17 Walter Houston Clark, one of the giants of the contemporary psychology of religion, claimed that "religion can be most characteristically described as the inner experience of the individual when he senses a Beyond, especially as evidenced by the effect of this experience on his behavior when he actively attempts to harmonize his life with the Beyond." 18 William James, perhaps the single most influential psychologist of religion, noted that religion consists of the "belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."19 These definitions probably represent the dominant view of religion in Western culture. "Inner experience" or "perception" is anchored in something external and independent of us, and indeed transcendent"the infinite," "a beyond," "the ultimate," or "the divine."20 Here is the language of faith. It connotes a being, a deity, God, in whom resides universal, absolute truth; it is the object of adoration by people who earnestly believe and feel that their moral character and relationship to the world is constructively transformed in the religious process. It may also connote something more impersonal, and yet absolute and demanding of our ultimate concern. Our task is to understand what these ideas and words mean psychologically. Finding Faith in Society and Culture Social scientists are loath to use religious ideas in their work unless they are subtly masked, possibly even from themselves. Over 80 years ago, Edward Scribner Ames suggested that "religion is the consciousness of the highest socia/values.21 "Social," of course, includes one's relationship with God. Even those who cross religion with psychology may embrace modern theological views, and replace the idea of God with something that moves humanity more to center stage. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman thus denoted religion as "a process of organizing the self around and toward the highest values."22 The significant feature of this approach is its reference to a social and/or personal framework as the essence of religion itself. Subjective terms such as "self or "highest values" are open to psychological definition and then become available for objective measurement.. Erich Fromm, one of the great movers of psychoanalytic thought into the realm of culture, demonstrated his social-scientific outlook when he described religion as "any system of thought and action shared by the group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion."23 This view stresses an explicit social context and an "object of devotion" that is not in any way limited to a supernatural being. One can include here popular heroes or political, economic, or social ideologies that are in some ways analogous to traditional religions. We are probably all familiar with people who believe in some doctrine to such a degree that its effect on their lives is hardly different from what most people regard as religious. Yet analogies can mislead as well as clarify. Society is well populated with objects of devotion that elicit the fervor of the devout in every group from children to senior citizens. If our anchoring point is established religion, we will need more focused definitions than those that include every possible social referent. The great theologians have always contended that no aspect of living, including the most commonplace of activities, can be divorced from a truly religious perspective. The poet Kahlil

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

Gibran said it well when he claimed that "your daily life is your temple and your religion."24 Religion thus becomes life as lived in its prosaic, enlightened, and even seamy aspects. Even though our search for religion points in many directions, Yinger unites a number of these, offering a position with which it is hard to disagree: . .. where one finds awareness of and interest in the continuing recurrent problems of human existencethe human condition itself as contrasted with specific problems; where one finds rites and shared beliefs relevant to that awareness, which define the strategy of an ultimate victory; and where one has groups organized to heighten that awareness and to teach and maintain those rites and beliefsthere one has religion.25 Given some "outside" system, religion thus becomes the knowledge, beliefs, feelings, actions, and experiences of the individual as they are expressed in relation to that system. Studying this "inside" response to that "outside" framework is the task of the psychologist of religion. Operational Definitions We have seen something of the difficulties encountered in attempts to define religion. We have alluded earlier to the idea of "operational definitions" as a means of getting around these problems. The essential characteristics of such definitions need to be known in order to understand how psychologists and social scientists can study religion empirically. Simply put, they are necessary in order for scientific endeavors to have any validity or reliability. Operational definitions in the psychology of religion are always referenced to some tangible religious indicator. This may be as obvious as church attendance, answers to questions about the importance of religion in one's life, statements dealing with the details of religious beliefs, or descriptions of the nature of a religious experience. Whenever we identify some index or measure that we have used or intend to employ, we are providing an operational definition. It is a definition in terms of "operations"the things we do, the methods and instruments we utilize. For example, take the concept of "religiosity." If we are to treat it operationally, it must be identified by specific "operations." These may be a person's responses to a questionnaire that is designed to assess religious commitmentthe strength of one's beliefs in the doctrines of a church, as well as frequency of participation in church services and/or in other activities (e.g., Sunday school, Bible study, a prayer group, the "sisterhood" or men's club, evangelical or missionary behavior). The way people answer questions about such involvement can tell us much about their "religiosity." Very often we create questionnaires that ask about such beliefs, experiences, and actions. An early researcher, Ernest Chave, constructed over 50 inventories that evaluated, among other aspects of religion, people's views about God, Jesus, the Bible, the church, worship, and virtually every aspect of their knowledge of and personal attitudes toward traditional religion.26 Such operational definitions always let people know just what the researcher means when religious language is used. We can say, for example, "Religiosity was measured by the Attitude toward the Church Questionnaire." Another student of this topic may argue that a different measure is a better indicator of religiosity. All researchers must develop theories and justifications for the operational definitions they employ, and their arguments can help us progress by allowing different approaches to be tested and compared in order to determine which ones best support or counter theories about how religion functions in people.

Psychologists of religion have constructed literally hundreds of questions and questionnaires to study different aspects of perceived religion. We must not view these efforts as ever fully describing or circumscribing religion or religiosity. Such simple indicators may point us in a meaningful direction; they can function as approximations to the religious life of the individual, but they cannot and do not treat it in its entirety. They are signs that point to those deeper, "behind the scenes" factors that often lie hidden in the personality or in social settings and relationships. Still, they are operationally definable, and everyone knows what was done. They can also show us the way to other empirical techniques that explore personal religion in greater depth. BEING RELIGIOUS: ONE THING OR MANY? Our passion to be efficient, to summarize the complex, to wrap it all up in "25 words or less," is often an enemy to real understanding. Words are symbols that place many things under one heading, and the term "religion" is an excellent example of this tendency. When psychologists first began research in this area, they simply constructed measures of religiousness or religiosity. Sophisticated thinkers, however, soon put aside notions that people simply vary along a single dimension with antireligious sentiments at one end and orthodox views at the other end. These proved unsatisfactory, and new ideas and indices began to appear in the research literature. We now read of "religious individualism," "religious institutionalization," "ritualism," "idealism," "mysticism," "particularism," "ethicalism," "devotionalism," "forgiveness," and a host of new religious labels.27 When we examine the many schemes that have been proposed, we see that some stress the purpose of faith, whereas others look to the possible personal and social origins of religion. Although some appear to mix psychology and religion, there are also those that take their cues exclusively from psychology and focus on motivation or cognition. However, the real problem is twofold: the presence of a "hidden" value agenda that implies "good" and "bad" religion, and a lack of conceptual and theoretical clarity. There is also great overlap among the various proposals, with essentially the same idea being phrased in different wordstestimony to the excellent vocabularies of some social scientists. On a surface level, we can say that most psychological researchers emphasize religious expression in belief, experience, and behavior. There is, however, one point on which all agree: namely, that even though there is only one word for "religion," there may be a hundred possible ways of being "religious." John Wilson thus notes that "religion is clearly not a homogenous whole. Individuals who are religious in one respect might not be in another ... religion is multidimensional."28 Theoretical versus Statistical Approaches Given the many faces of religion, our concern with empirical evidence and with operational definitions leads to the question of where the many different forms or types of religion come from. Basically, there are two sources: theory and the objective analysis of data. The theoretical approach relies on concepts and ideas, invariably derived from induction. This means that people have observed and thought about religion, and from their many observations, they suggest what its multifaceted essence is. The next step is to go out and attempt to demonstrate through research whether these ideas can be confirmed. In other words, do the findings support

a theory that suggests certain kinds of religion? The theory must spawn hypotheses that can be assessed objectively. Their rejection might suggest modifications in the theory. Sometimes, even though we might like to reject the entire theory, we are rarely able to do so. Grand theories that cannot be totally tested (e.g., psychoanalytic theory) often yield "mini-" views that are amenable to research assessment. The second, or statistical, approach starts with quantitative data. Most often, objective answers are provided by a sample of people to questions or statements about religion. We apply certain statistical techniques to these data, including correlation and factor analysis, as well as a wide variety of inferential statistics used to test empirical hypotheses (see the Appendix to this chapter). Complex analyses are carried out; a certain amount of subjectivity does enter the picture; and finally the result is a claim that there are so many "dimensions" of religiosity in some reasonably welldefined group, such as Roman Catholics or Methodists, Claims are, however, made that "religion in general" is being evaluated multidimensionally Rather frequently, after the fact, researchers find out that the new system is not appropriate for non-Christians, or that it seems to work best with conservative Protestant groups and not with more liberal denominations (or vice versa). What we really need is a combination of theory and data analysis that can be continually tested and refined. Some Multidimensional Frameworks An excellent example of one effort to offer a comprehensive multidimensional system was advanced by Verbit.29 He suggested that religion is composed of six components, each of which contains four dimensions. These are optimistically said to be best understood relative to Verbit's definition of religion as "man's relationship to whatever he conceives as meaningful ultimacy."30 The proposed components are as follows: 1. Ritual: private and/or public ceremonial behavior. 2. Doctrine: affirmations about the relationship of the individual to the ultimate. 3. Emotion: the presence of feelings (awe, love, fear, etc.), 4. Knowledge: intellectual familiarity with sacred writings and principles. 5. Ethics: rules for the guidance of interpersonal behavior, connoting right and wrong, good and bad. 6. Community: involvement in a community of the faithful, psychologically, socially, and/or physically. Each of these components is said to vary along the following four dimensions: 1. Content: the essential nature of the component {e.g., specific rituals, ideas, knowledge, principles, etc.). 2. Frequency: how often the content elements are encountered or are acted upon, 3. Intensity: degree of commitment 4. Centrality: importance or salience. This scheme might be a good theoretical guide for analyses of either institutional or personal religion, but it contains a number of potential problems. Obviously, there must be some overlap among both the components and the dimensions. For example, if we study the component of ritual, there is a high likelihood that the more frequently a ritual is carried

out, the more likely it is to be central to the religion and to elicit considerable feeling. To state this problem differently, the dimensions sound good conceptual)/, but the relationships among frequency, intensity, and centrality may be so strong as to suggest that analyzing them independently would be redundant; they may all reduce to one dimension, which we could call something like "importance of religion." Another difficulty concerns the components. There is a good chance that each is in itself multidimensional, meaning that they possess a number of different facets relative to the way people perceive and act upon them. Finally, despite the construction of this potentially useful grand scheme (which is supposed to cover ail religions), this framework does not appear to have ever been directly operationalized and evaluated in research. The search for dimensions of religion often takes on the appearance of a game. Sometimes it is manifested as an exercise in complex statistics without any theoretical backing. In other cases there is good conceptual thinking, but no research support. This has become the psychology of religion's "gold rush," and there is reason to believe that some gold has been found. The valuable metal is evident in its stimulating effect on scholars, whose questions and arguments are leading to better definitions and improved theories along with theoretically guided research. Less and less of the time, however, are workers in the field succumbing to the lure of new "forms" of faith with appealing labels. Even an older, well-established scheme such as Allport's "intrinsic-extrinsic" distinction is being increasingly distrusted.31 Despite challenges to the validity of these ideas, multidimensional constructions of religion are likely to continue and become more subtle and refined. Table 1.1 presents a sampling of some of the better-known of these frameworks. We should not overlook the fact that there is overlap among the multidimensional schemes that different scholars have proposed. Some idea of this problem can be observed in Table 1.2, Mention should be made of a shift in emphasis when forms of faith are conceptualized. For example, the distance between defining intrinsic and extrinsic religion and referring to people as "intrinsics" and "extrinsics" does not appear to be great in reality, however, the criteria for placing individuals in one or the other of these categories are often quite debatable. This kind of terminology implies "pure types," and though these idealized images make for interesting discussion, in real life they are rare to the point of nonexistence. Still, both as scientists and as human beings, we like the appearance of unchallengeable certainty that classifications offer us. To be able to define everyone as a saint or a sinner would greatly simplify our lives. In our own eyes we might identify with the former; unhappily, others might see more of the latter in us. Such patternings of people are, however, quite commonly offered. Roof has recently looked at the religious propensities of the baby boom generation and come up with four types he terms the "loyalists," the "returnees," the "believers-but-not-belongers," and the "seekers."32 When Benson and Williams studied religion in the U.S. Congress, they distinguished six kinds of religionists, which they called "legalistic," "self-concerned," "integrated," "people-concerned," ""nontraditional," and "nominal."33 All of these schemes point to the complexity of religious faith, as well as the uses to which it may be put Let us be aware of the fact that there is invariably overlap among these categories, and that clear operational indicators of how their creators arrive at their designation are needed. Simple lines cannot be drawn from forms of faith to types of people. The usefulness of identifying types is a matter of debate in the contemporary psychology of religion.34 As already noted, some of these classifications are based on theory, whereas others are the product of sophisticated statistical analyses, particularly what is termed "factor analysis"

11
TABLE 1.1. Some Multidimensional Approaches to the Study of Individual Religion Committed religion Allen and Spilka (1967) "Utilizes an abstract philosophical perspective: multiplex religious ideas are relatively clear in meaning and an open and flexible frame work of commitment relates religion to daily activities" (p. 205}. "Vague, non-differentiated, bifurcated, neutralized" (p. 205). A cognitively simplified and personally convenient faith. Allport (1966) "Faith as a supreme value in its own right... oriented toward a unification of being that take seriously the commandment of brotherhood, strives to transcend all self-centered needs" (p. 455). "Religion that is strictly utilitarian; useful for the self in granting safety, social standing, solace, and endorsement of one's chosen way of life" (p, 455). Batson and Ventis (1982) "Religion is a means to other self-serving ends" (p. 151). "Religion is an ultimate end in itself" (p. 151). Clark (1958) "An authentic inner experience of the divine combined with whatever efforts (the individual may make that harmonize his life with the divine" (p. 23). "A very routine and uninspired carrying out... an obligation" (p. 24).

Consensual religion

Intrinsic religion

Extrinsic religion

Means religion End religion Primary religious behavior

Secondary religious behavior

Tertiary religious behavior "A matter of religious routine or convention accepted on the authority of someone else"(p. 25). Authoritarian religion Humanistic religion Fromm (1950) "The main virtue of this type of religion is obedience, its cardinal sin is disobedience" (p. 35). "This type of religion is centered around man and his strength . . . virtue is self-realization, not obedience" (p. 37). Glock (1962) "The religious person will... achieve direct knowledge of ultimate reality or will experience religious emotion" (p. S-99). "The religious person will hold to certain beliefs" (p. S-99). "Specifically religious practices [are] expected of religious adherents" (p. S-99). "The religious person will be informed and knowledgeable about the basic tenets of his faith and its sacred scriptures" (p. S-99). "What people ought to do and the attitudes they ought to hold as a consequence of their religion" (p. S-99). Hunt (1972) Taking "at face value any religious statement without in any way questioning it" (p. 43). A simple rejection of literalist religious statements. A reinterpretation of religious statements to seek their deeper symbolic meanings. (cont.)

Experiential dimension

Ideological dimension Ritualistic dimension Intellectual dimension

Consequential dimension

Literal religion

Antiliteral religion Mythological religion

TABLE 1.1 (cont)

Healthy-mindedness Sick souls

James (1902/1985) An optimistic, happy, extroverted, social faith; "the tendency that looks on ail things and sees that they are good" (p. 78). A faith of pessimism, sorrow, suffering, and introverted reflection: "the way that takes all this experience of evil as something essential" {p. 36). Lenski(I961) "Stresses intellectual assent of prescribed doctrines" (p. 23). "Emphasizes the importance of private, or personal communion with God" {p. 23). McConahay and Hough (1973) "Religious belief centered on the wrath of God as it is related to other people ... emphasizes punishment for wrong-doers" (p. 55). "A sense of one's own unworthiness and badness... a manifest need for punishment and a conviction that it will inevitably come" (p. 56). Belief "oriented toward the forgiveness of one's own sins" (p. 56). Belief that "emphasizes the common humanity of all persons as creatures of God, and God's iove ... related to the redemption of the whole world" (p. 56). "Values which are more culturally than theologically oriented" (p. 56).

Doctrinal orthodoxy Devotionalisrn

Guilt-oriented, extrapunitive Guilt-oriented, intropunitive Love-oriented, self-centered Love-oriented, other centered Culture-oriented, conventional

(see the Appendix to this chapter). Many of these schemes remain isolated and untested in the literature, but they are suggestive formulations that merit further study. Some stress the motives of religious people; others imply an emphasis on cognition and thinking; still other patterns refer to personality traits in relation to faith. Though these breakdowns are cited now for illustrative purposes, we expect to come back to them and show how they have been employed by workers in the psychology of religion. Even though religion has been shown to be complex, we need to recognize one of those "behind the scenes" variables that is obviously of very great significance. This has been called "salience," or "the importance an individual attaches to being religious."35 The connection between religious belief or experience and religious and nonreligious behavior may in part be a Function of salience. In other words, the more important religion is to a person, the greater the likelihood that it will influence how that person responds in everyday life. WHY ARE PEOPLE RELIGIOUS? "Why are people religious?" is probably the most basic of all questions concerning faith. Some people find answers that cancel all doubt; others live in uncertainty and turmoil. To many, the presence of religion is all the proof they need that there is a deity. A man told one of us that the fact that he existed presupposed the existence of Godan argument that others night claim possesses a few fundamental weaknesses. Not a few claim that the existence of the Bible is all they require; in Islamic cultures, it may be the Koran. There is reason to believe that other peoples will respond similarly with reference to their own sacred writings. By

TABLE 1.2. A Comparison of Some Multidimensional Schemes for Studying Religion

Verbit(1970) Glock (1962) Ritual Doctrine

Fukuyama (1961)

Davidson(I975)' Practice Public Private Belief Vertical Horizontal Experiential Desirability Frequency Intellectual Religious knowledge Intellectual scrutiny

Ritualistic Cultic Ritual commitment Devotionalism Ideological Orthodoxy Creedal Particularism Ethical ism Experiential Intellectual Devotional Cognitive

Emotion Knowledge Ethics Community

Consequential

Consequential Personal Social

"In this system, the designations "public," "vertical," "desirability," "religious knowledge," and "personal" are regarded as conservative ends of the dimensions in question, while "private," "horizontal," "frequency," "intellectual scrutiny," and "social" constitute the liberal positions.

contrast, there are those whose personal religious orientation drives them on an unending search for truth and knowledge. The/ continually speculate on whether or not there is a God, and, if so, what God's nature is. When we phrase the question "Why religion?" it is to determine the psychological foundations for (1) religious behavior in general, wherever it exists and regardless of the form it takes; and (2) the development of and expression of faith by the individual. It is also obvious that these goals are closely related. Our immediate concern is with the first of these issues, and we again show that this is a field with few simple answers. Biological Foundations for Religious Behavior The Instinct Tradition When psychology began to develop as a field worthy of study, there already existed in philosophy, science, and the popular mind a long tradition of speculation regarding the origins of human behavior. The Greeks provided a basis for both an empirical tradition that saw ail mental content as the product of learning, and a parallel heritage that stressed a doctrine of innate ideas. Though the English empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and Hume later emphasized the former, the work of Darwin and his followers gave added impetus to the idea of inherent sources of motivation, cognition, and behavior. By the late 19th century, these biologically based notions dominated much of Western thinking about the essence of humanity. It was "nature over nurture," and the vehicle for accomplishing this hegemony was the concept of "instincts'* that is, inborn, native mental forces including motives, perceptions, and actions. Everywhere one turned, there were instincts to explain why people acted as they did.

People formed groups because of a gregarious instinct, war was a function of a pugnacious instinct, and all women possessed a maternal instinct. In a sense, each of these assumptions was explaining one unknown by postulating another unknown; however, they seemed to make sense because animals evidenced such instincts, and Darwinian thought demonstrated a continuity between humans and animals. Needless to say, it was not long before religion was explained on a similar basis. At the turn of the century, Le Bon proposed such an instinct, which he termed a "religious sentiment."36 This was vaguely referred to as natural and unconscious. Soon after, in a similar manner, Trotter felt that religion was an expression of a more basic "herd instinct."37 The revival of the empirical tradition through behaviorism in the early 20th century generated strong attacks on instinctual explanations. The death blow to this tradition was probably administered by L. L.Bernard in 1924. His massive review of the literature turned up some 5,684 instincts, of which 83 were theorized to underlie religion.38 The difficulty of dealing with a specifically religious instinct prompted some psychologists to see faith as the product of a number of instincts and/or emotions. William McDougall,39 one of the giants of early psychology, understood religion to be an outgrowth of what he called the instincts of curiosity, fear, and subjection. To these he added three religious emotions of admiration, awe, and reverence. One often needed a scorecard to distinguish the instincts from the emotions. Hardy postulated an instinct of approach (to be identified with the object of worship), which he erratically combined with an instinct of causation and an instinct of self-preservation to produce religion.40 Bernard claimed that those who saw an instinctual basis for religion were naive with respect to heredity, and usually did not know that religion as they conceived it was not universal, as biology would have it.41 Dresser put all of these attempts in perspective by observing: When a group of instincts is substituted for the alleged religious instinct as the origin of religious experience, the objection is that psychologists have not even been able to agree on the list of instincts and their corresponding emotions as attributed to life in general.42 Today, except in very well-defined situations involving animals, the term "instinct" is avoided in discussions of humans. Still, it lurks in the background in some conceptions even if the word remains unspoken. For example, Ostow and Scharfstein speak of "the need to believe," which they affirm "is almost as necessary to humans as eating... belief is essential to the efficient functioning of a human organism."43 They claim that "religious and moral conceptions must have a primal source in the deep, often unconscious drives that He behind our beliefs and practices."44 Such vague, undefined inner sources for faith are not significantly different from instincts, and, though satisfactory to some people, are not acceptable to the scientific mind. Here is the appearance of knowledge, not its substance. Sociobiology and Religion A more sophisticated approach to this problem has been advanced by Edward O. Wilson, who created a stir in social science circles by proposing the concept of "sociobiology." This is "defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior, in all kinds of organisms, including man."45 Asserting that "religious practices can be mapped onto the two dimensions of genetic advantage and evolutionary change,"46 Wilson regards religious beliefs as "enabling mechanisms for survival."47 Though he admits that "religion

constitutes the greatest challenge to sociobiology," 48 Wilson does not hesitate to offer a theory that views the roles religion plays in societal survival as important influences on gene selection and the shaping of the human gene pool. Hypothesizing ecclesiastical, ecological, ai genetic forms of selection "over many lifetimes," Wilson claims "that religious practices that consistently enhance survival and procreation of the practitioners will propagate the physiological controls that favor acquisition of the practices. -. ." 49 Basically, this position declares that believers will survive, whereas nonconformists will be physically and/or socially excluded from society, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will be able to pass on their genes succeeding generations. An additional step is posited in this process. Religion is tied into the development and maintenance of moral and altruistic motivations; hence religion supports prosocial behavior that aids groups to survive, especially kinship groups. Indeed, many people feel that morality and ethics are primarily based on religion. Burhoe thus suggests that "religion transforms genetic selfishness into reciprocal altruism."50 Sociobiology is premised on innate genetic factors that affect social life. Most Nor American psychologists were and are nurtured by psychology courses that stress learning and experience, not biology; hence sociobiological explanations seem rather "far out" and uncongenial to the contemporary mind. The real test, however, is whether there are data that offer some insight into the extent of hereditary and environmental influences on religious beliefs and behaviors. Recently, such information has become available. Using five measures of religious beliefs, interests, and activities, a group from the famous investigation of thousands of twins at the University of Minnesota studied samples of identical and fraternal twins who were reared either together or apart. Obviously, identical twins possess the same genet endowment whether they are brought up together or separately. In contrast, fraternal twins are no more closely genetically related than ordinary siblings, yet seem to encounter a similar environment if brought up together. Given these facts, it was possible to make an estimate of the degree to which genetics versus environment entered into the religious inclinations of those studied. The investigators concluded: "Our findings indicate that individual differences in religious attitudes, interests, and values arise from both genetic and environmental influences. More specifically, genetic factors account for approximately 50% of the observed variance on our measures."51 In other words, religion, as measured in this stud was in equal parts a function of heredity and environment. This is challenging work that needs further verification. In addition, we have to a; whether the genetics are influencing something intellectual or temperamental that religion taps. Sociobiology provides provocative hypotheses, including a possible scientific foundation for Jungian archetypes, as Wenegrat has argued.52 Clearly, this approach is neither complete nor a final answer; the findings of one research project can only be regarded i suggestive, and must be confirmed by more work that delves deeper into the issue. A doc has been opened, but many have to pass through it in order to appreciate the view on the other side. Religious Behavior: Between Biology and Psychology There is a gradual shading from ideas that avow religion to be a pure creation of nature to full environmental posture that simply looks on faith as learned in a social milieu. The oil Scottish school of clergy/psychologists who wrote before William James's time held the former view, and felt that a full investigation of nature would reveal the active working hand

16

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

of God behind behavior. The Darwinian revolution removed the deity from this sphere, and left psychology with a biological substrate to which behaviorism felt all human actions could eventually be referred. A century of writing and research on the physiological bases of behavior tells us that perception, learning, cognition, and motivation have biological roots; yet I considerable gap exists between the topics of social psychology, of which religion is one, and the neuromuscular correlates of the ideas and responses made in people's interactions with others. Having biological roots does not necessarily limit human potential, for much if Hot most of both the content and process of perception, motivation, and cognition is the Jesuit of learning and experience. Current theories of the origin of religion usually place us in this gray realm between psychology and biology. It bears repetition that we must confine ourselves to the domain of nature and social life. Being objective may frequently conflict with personal beliefs; however, as psychologists we have no alternative but to stay with what we know, can theorize, and assess. This position forces us to raise questions that recognize that religious behavior may have roots in both nature and nurture. An Example from Developmental Psychology: Cognitive Growth Developmental approaches to religious behavior stress cognitive growth, and most often are based on the ideas of the great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. These are detailed in Chapter 2. Behind Piagetian discussions of "stages of growth" are somewhat muted notions of genetic and biological factors. Biological predispositions for a certain orderly pattern of development Tough physiological maturation are present. As one of the main interpreters of Piaget put it, In Piaget's view, cognitive development must have its roots firmly planted in biological growth, id basic principles valid for the former are to be found only among those which are true of the latter."53 An excellent example of this kind of thinking, the biological basis of which remains implicit, is evident in David Elkind's fine article "The Origins of Religion in the Child."54 Borrowing from Piaget, who is explicit about the innate sources of intelligence, Elkind selects four basic components of intelligence that are said to develop in the following sequence: "conservation," "search for representation," "search for relations," and "search for comprehension." Conservation is a "life-long quest for permanence amidst a world of change."55 "Permanence" tells us that something still exists even if it is not immediately present. For example, a mother may leave her child; however, when the concept of object permanence has developed, the child realizes that she continues to exist and will return. The greatest threat to permanence is death, and religion conserves life through images of an afterlife. The natural product of conservation is a deity that guarantees immortality. By the age of 2 years, object permanence has been established, and its application to religion follows as a matter of course. Concurrently, language has started to develop and becomes the most important part of the thinking process. Thinking itself is fundamentally concerned with representing reality in symbolic form, and language is central in this search representation, because it has the potential of embodying the most complex aspects of experience in single words. So it is that religion and God come to represent highly elaborate intricate thoughts and images. These are associated with the resolution of what we would normally consider basic contradictions (e.g., making the sun stand still, virgin birth, immaculate

17 conception, etc.). Symbolic representation develops into a powerful cognitive tool, which, it is claimed, intrinsically leads to a religious perspective. Following the establishment of symbolization, a search for relations follows. Intellectual understanding entails awareness of how an individual is linked to others and to the world at large. A child gains personal meaning from knowing connections to family members, friends, school, neighborhood, and other objects and ideas of personal significance. With increasing age and exposure to new information from the media and schools, among other possibilities, the young person continually makes new inferences, associations, and relationships. Cognitive vistas expand from the family to the community, nation, world, and universe, and even further into the realm of ideas. The search for relations never ends, for people need to locate and understand who they are "in the scheme of things." Religion comes to satisfy this associational drive as it leads to ever broader horizons, even to those considered ultimate. Finally, as childhood gives way to adolescence, the young person's intelligence increasingly utilizes abstractions, discriminations, and generalizations. As the person copes with the problems of personal existence, a sense of individuality gains strength. Reason and intellect struggle to integrate the person's ever-widening perspectives. This search for comprehension is well served by a faith that offers guidelines through its institutions, representatives, and theologies. Elkind thus sees religion as a normal, natural outcome of mental development. The fundamentals of this process appear to be rooted in a biological substrate that manifests itself in physiological maturation with its various intellectual expressions. The contents of these expressions, however, are products of experience. People are not born into a spiritual vacuum; society, through parents, relatives, teachers, and clergy, among many others, offers religious solutions to problems. Most often, these solutions are accepted with minor variations. Psychological Foundations for Religious Behavior Obviously, the views described above contain many psychological elements, while leaving the door open to questions of biological origin. In contrast, many theoreticians explicitly state that they are not concerned with the origins of religion, yet their ideas are relevant to questions about the sources of religious activity.56 Other thinkers embrace concepts that are strictly psychological, and they may even be quite open in suggesting that religion per se is exclusively a product of human psychology.57 As a rule, these approaches fall into two large groupings which we might call the "defensive/protective tradition" and the "growth/realization tradition." The Defensive/Protective Tradition Facing Fear: The Need for Meaning and Control. The first framework we discuss here is fundamentally based on hedonism and need fulfillment. It has been part of a long-standing philosophical/psychological heritage that hearkens back to ancient Greece, and is one that still prevails as the dominant position in contemporary psychology. We might summarize it hi the phrase "No one does something for nothing." This means that action only occurs when there is a need for it and something is to be gained by it. In biology, the concept of "homeo-stasis" is used; this suggests that when change occurs, invariably a deficiency, lack, or short-

coming exists and the body attempts to readjust in order to return to the desired state of balance. Psychologists have employed this notion to help them understand why people behave as they do. For example, if a person is hungry, he or she eats and satisfies this need. The body is satiated as far as various nutritive substances are concerned. Psychologically, the motivational tension that has caused the person to seek food is also alleviated. In applications of these ideas to religion, the motivational base has been theorized as human weakness and inadequacy. When people can't make sense out of what is happening, and are unable to control a situation, fear often enters the picture; thus fear is said to be the source of religion. As Feuerbach claimed, "The explanation of religion by fear is eminently confirmed by the fact that most primitive peoples take the frightening aspects of nature as the principal if not exclusive objects of their religion."58 Leuba cited the view of Lucretius that "Fear begets Gods," and Hume's contention "the first ideas of religion arose ... from a concern with regard to the events of life and fears which actuate the human mind."59 Gross summarizes this view succinctly by noting, "When misery is the greatest, God is the closest."60 Finally, we must recognize that this association of fear with religion is well supported by research.61 How Does Fear Stimulate Religion? When people are truly afraid of something, they often confront circumstances that pose great uncertainty, ambiguity, and lack of meaning. Or, if the situation is clear, they lack a sense of control and mastery; they are powerless. It is not surprising that humans struggle to make the ambiguous clear, the doubtful certain, and the indeterminate sure. People search for ways to make sense out of life, to give them a feeling of control, to make the future predictable, and especially to insure a positive outcome. Religion offers such possibilities through scripture, theologies, prayer, liturgy, and ceremony. John Dewey captured the essence of this perspective thus: Man who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security.... One ... attempt [is] to propitiate the powers which environ him and determine his destiny. It expressed itself in supplication, sacrifice, ceremonial rite and magical cult. In time these crude methods were largely displaced. The sacrifice of a contrite heart was esteemed more pleasing than that of bulls and oxen; the inner attitude of reverence and devotion more desirable than external ceremonies, ff a man couid not conquer destiny he could willingly ally himself with it; putting his will, even in sore affliction, on the side of the powers which dispense fortune,62he could escape defeat and might triumph in the midst of destruction. Philosopher Josiah Royce referred to this "natural chaos" as a prime source of spiritual motivation, whereas noted psychologist of religion Paul Johnson sees faith as "the opposite of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty."63 Once present, people's faith protects them from the storms of life that rage about them. Human frailty and vulnerability thus become the origins of a religion that offers hope. A slight variation on this theme was provided by Dunlap, who claimed that "The only theory of religion which today seems to have value as a scientific working hypothesis is the theory that religion has its origins and its support in dissatisfaction with life, resulting from the failure of life to satisfy the primary desires of man."64 Since this was written almost three-quarters of a century ago, it has been a somewhat productive "scientific working hypothesis," but by no means has it proven to be the only scientifically testable theory. An alternative psychological version of human shortcoming focuses on the weakness

19 of the child. According to Freud, the child confers upon the father a mantle of omnipotence. With age and experience, there is a growing awareness of paternal limitations; this awareness leads to the view that "God is the exalted father, and the longing for the father is the root of the need for religion."65 Catholic theologian Hans Kng perceives this as a defective religion. "Religious questions ... become a form of self-deception and escapism ... religion relies solely on wish-fulfillment and... is reduced to pure satisfaction of needs ... a religion [of] infantile structures, a regression to childhood wishing."66 Religion is again "a daughter of Hope and Fear."67 Modern life has introduced new sources of doubt and turmoil, which are said to sponsor religion. W. T. Stace notes: There has been growing up in men's minds, dominated as they are by science, a new imaginative picture of the world. The world, according to this new picture, is purposeless, senseless, meaningless. Nature is nothing but matter in motion.... If the scheme of things is purposeless and 68 meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Stace then infers that "the essence of the [religious] spirit itself [is] belief in a meaningful and purposeful world."69 Many scholars claim that the basic motivation of humans is to derive meaning from chaos, and this effort may be the taproot from which much religion springs. Anxiety, Guilt, and Deprivation: Religion in the World. Looking for the origins of religion in the psychology of the individual confronts us with this issue: All of us are born into families that overwhelmingly represent the cultural mainstream of the society in which they and we exist. This means that the dominant religious framework will be communicated to children by parents, siblings, peers, and innumerable institutional expressions. These are typically accepted, and become integral aspects of the children's personalities. One very significant aspect of personality concerns the motivational fact that when people are threatened physically or psychologically, anxiety is produced, and they attempt to cope with it. Freud recognized three forms of anxiety: "reality-based," "moral," and "neurotic."70 Reality-based anxiety results from real, objective, independent sources of danger in the world, and these are likely to be powerful sources of religion. This is a faith that is established in the normal course of growing up in society. Moral anxiety concerns the distress that develops when one violates learned codes of proper behavior. Neurotic anxiety refers to extreme and inappropriate expressions of dread, tension, and worry that accompany behaving in ways that are considered normal by most people. Moral and neurotic forms of anxiety can be a function of one's religious background and current stance. For many people, moral anxiety based on guilt and guilt feelings activates religious concerns. "Right" and "wrong" and "good" and "bad" are standards that are associated with religion from early childhood particularly through such precepts as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, which can be used by parents as means of child control. Sometimes such standards may have been acquired in a home where powerless parents form a "coalition with God" to enforce discipline. 71 Violation of moral codes becomes especially serious, as children are taught that this is an offense against the most powerful entity conceivable. Depending on family teaching and reinforcement, these ideas become foundations for moral and social life. In fact, the existence of morality is to many people impossible without established religion and belief in God.

"Straying from the fold" can arouse considerable guilt, which may only be resolved by a return to religion. Conversions, intense religious experiences, and other signs that imply a strengthening of faith have been reported in response to such motivations.72 Religion can provide that additional spark of self-justification, that extra source of outside power to buttress inner doubt and weakness and to help control impulses (note the role of a "higher power" in Alcoholics Anonymous and similar groups). There is, however, another side to this coin, which bears on the development and expression of neurotic anxiety. Mowrer and others have pointed out the role of religion in enhancing feelings of guilt. Some people believe that God's punishment will follow those who are sinful, both in this life and in that to come. "Hellfire and damnation" have no limits.73 Too often these views are part of a rigid, inflexible, unforgiving, and tyrannical belief system. Images of a threatening, unloving, and punitive deity may well be features of such a neurotically based faith. In Chapter 12, we provide more information relevant to this issue. Depending on the way religious beliefs operatein terms of moral or neurotic guiltthe fundamental need is that "Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.'"74 A General Deprivation Theory. Human shortcoming, weakness, and deficiency take many forms that a religious system may help to alleviate. The noted sociologist Charles Clock75 studied the formation of religious groups and postulated five kinds of deprivation. Though the focus of his work was on group formation, the types of deprivation he emphasized affect individuals not only collectively, but, in the last analysis, individually. This is evident in Clock's definition of deprivation: "any and all of the ways that an individual or group may be, or feel disadvantaged in comparison either to other individuals or groups or to an internalized set of standards."76 According to Clock, "economic," "social," "organismic," "ethical, ""'and "psychic" forms of deprivation can stimulate religious activity. Economic deprivation exists when people feel they lack enough money to meet survival needs and needs for other basic life satisfactions and enjoyments. Clearly, this has both objective and subjective aspects. One individual may have very little money, yet may not be unhappy with the degree to which his or her desires are met economically. Another may have much money, but may feel that he or she is in severe financial straits. Religion may tell the believer that money doesn't really count; it is the way life is lived spiritually and morally that is important. In contrast, historically, religion has sometimes been the rallying point for rebellion of the "have nots" against the "haves." Social deprivation concerns the problem of how individual differences are socially regarded. For a wide variety of reasons, some people are much more highly esteemed and respected than others. Those who possess such qualities are the ones who are chosen for desirable positions; they accrue the social rewards of status, power, and prestige. Lacking the opportunities to acquire the admiration and recognition that others seem to achieve easily weighs heavily on some individuals. Walters and Bradley suggest that a lack of friends can stimulate religious activity.77 Expressing these needs religiously can transform an outsider into an insider: A person can attain social approval and regard in religious circles through participation, piety, and commitment. In addition, such a person may come to believe that he or she has found favor in the eyes of God, and this takes precedence over all alternatives. Organismic deprivation is related to individual variation in mental and physical health. People differ tremendously in these characteristics. Some are "hardy," whereas others seem to be ill much of the time. One person is physically strong, another weak; there are those who are handicapped visually, are hard of hearing, possess deformed limbs, have paralyses, or are

21 neurotic or even psychotic. The list is almost endless, and the outcome is often a great de of personal pain and psychological distress. People ask "Why me?" and for many the on satisfactory responses are through a religion that seems to provide both answers and solace. Perceiving oneself as Job also means that one has been chosen or is being tested by God. This conveys a special spiritual status on an individual. Religious mystical experiences may appear to change both the objective situation and the person's subjective outlook on it.73 In U.S. society, many people are dissatisfied with their own moral state and that of the social order. They feel ethically deprived; something is lackinga constructive, meaningful, and honorable way of life. A competitive, "dog eat dog" philosophy is not for them. High rates of crime, abortion, and divorce trouble them. They decry a "lack of family values, political opportunism, or economic barbarism. Their silent revolution can ally them with traditional conservative religion. The Bible may become their moral guide to life; religion is the solution to their ethical dilemma. Clock pointed out that ethical and psychic deprivation are somewhat similar. Whereas the former emphasizes moral concerns, the latter is more general in that the individual seek meaning for life in general. Low selfesteem, lack of identity, the feeling that one doesn't belongall these are aspects of psychic deprivation, and, from the individual's standpoint religion may counter these very effectively. People may have accomplished much economically and socially, but they suffer from the feeling that "something is missing," A faith may be chosen to fill this void. Human weakness and deficiency, whether real or imagined, may take many forms that a religious framework can help resolve. It appears that wherever we observe conflict, frustration, distress, and inadequacy, there is a likelihood of faith entering the picture to rectify the situation. Anthropologist F. L. K. Hsu captures the central theme of this approach to religion thus: Man will always love and be in need of love. Man will always aspire to heights which he cannot reach; Man will always be fallible; Man will always die and be in distress; and Man will always have a seemingly ever-expanding universe before him even if he has conquered all earth. As long as man is subject to these and other circumstances, religion will have a place in human culture.79 The Growth/Realization Tradition Religion as Overall Growth and Realization. Even though the motivational core of psychology is what we term "defensive/protective" in nature, a number of scholars have proposed a major alternative, which is positive rather than negative in its emphasis. Kurt Goldstein and Abraham Maslow utilized the concept of "self-actualization" to suggest that in all circumstances people attempt to utilize their capacities to their fullest, and to grow and improve at every opportunity, rather than simply to solve problems.80 According to Maslow, self-actualization is most fully expressed in "peak experiences," those very special moments of emotional and intellectual enlightenment He sees these as "the raw materials out of which not only religions can be built, but philosophies of any kind." 81 He further claims that "the peak experience may be the model of the religious revelation or the religious illumination or conversion."82 This approach counters the defensive view that "belief in God is a sign of man's alienation from himself, his projection onto God of that which is an unrealized possibility."83 Movement from a deficiency outlook to one of growth may be inferred from Bertocci's notion of "religion as creative insecurity."84 Johnson climbs the next step when he speaks of

the "productive functions of faith," such as the integration of personality, personal betterment, the uniting of believers, and so on. 85 In like manner, Gardner claims that "all true religion is a path out of the quicksands of selfpreoccupation and self-worship."86 Increasingly, the humanistic and phenomenological psychologies support the idea that people have the potential to create, grow, develop, progress, and become ever more competent and able. This theme of enlightenment, improvement, and uplift clearly finds more ready acceptance on a popular level than in mainstream psychology. Religionists are also prone to utilize such ideas; thus we read that "religion ... is a process of organizing the self around and toward the highest values."87 Elwood calls it an "attitude toward the universe regarded as a social and ethical force."88 Religion now becomes self-enhancement, growth, realization, actualization, the broadening of experiential horizons. This accords well with Tillch's perception that "faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality."89 Religion as Motivational and Cognitive Growth. Research utilizing a growth/realization perspective is rare in established professional psychology. Much humanistic writing has been devoted to these ideas, but what might be regarded as sincere efforts at conceptualizing the problem cannot be substituted for solid investigative study. Psychologists with an empirical/behavioral outlook often find this a difficult area in which to work. The main problem is one of operationalizing somewhat fuzzy concepts before research can be undertaken. Examination of this literature suggests an emphasis on motivation and cognition. Reference is primarily to the creation of meaning, and the assumption is usually made that this is the result of a basic, possibly innate drive. For example, Maddi claims "that the ultimate problem of motivational psychology is to understand how man searches for and finds meaning."90 Nuttin suggests a fundamental composite need for selfpreservation and self-development, which eventuates "in certain universal religious tendencies of mankind.'"" Though this may take many forms, Nuttin believes that there is "a need for contact with the whole order of reality, the only kind of contact which can give meaning to life." 91 This is also referred to as a "spiritual impulse," and its core is said to lie in a quest for meaning. Tageson refers to Nuttin as "describing ... a basic thirst for an Absolute, a stable ground to serve as an anchor for our own ephemeral existence."" Similar ideas about the importance of meaning to mental well-being have been widely espoused. Viktor Frankl's entire psychological system revolves around a "search for meaning" that is analogous to a universal striving for ultimate meaning in a "growth" sense.94 The "search" is premised upon a "will to meaning" that is life's basic motivation. 95 Fabry states that "one gets the impression that Frankl uses the word 'meaning' where traditional writers speak of the 'will of God.'"96 Religiously oriented psychologists have thus found Frankl's views productive for pastoral counseling and psychotherapy.97 Elkind's cognitive-developmental theory (described earlier) falls under this heading, as it literally sees meaning as part of a growth process. Since this approach is founded on assumed biological processes that are maturational, not motivational, it is exclusively cognitive in nature. This emphasis focuses on intelligence and its uses as intellectual horizons expand with age. It reaches its fullest expression in Einstein's concept of "cosmic religion ... the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research."98 One can argue that the goal is the same for religion: "We participate in an ultimate meaning of things."99 O'Dea states this position impressively: ... religion gives answers to questions that arise at the point of ultimacy, at those points in human experience that go beyond the everyday attitude toward life ... because men are cognitively

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

23

capable of going to the "limit-situation," of proceeding through and transcending the conventional answers to the problem of meaning 00 and of raising fundamental questions in terms of their human relevance.' Religion as Habit Completing our survey of psychological approaches to religion is the simple assumption that religion is nothing but a learned phenomenon. People are born into social orders in which religion already exists, and it is both formally and informally learned. This is the position of B. F. Skinner and those who advocate a more or less pure behaviorism. 101 It is basically the successor to William James's assertion that "Habit is... the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent."102 Though James thought of religion as much more than the product of simple learning, in a critical sense he might have had in mind the way most people seem to acquire and express their faith mechanically. Parents teach it to their children and these lessons are reinforced by society through the fact that births, marriages, deaths, and virtually every noteworthy personal and social event is solemnized by religious institutions, rituals, language, and concepts. Robert Bellah states that U.S. society possesses a generalized religious atmosphere, a "civil religion" that is integral to public social and political life.'03 The U.S. milieu tells its inhabitants from early childhood that it is simply "un-American" not to believe in God, to deny this "object-less obsession with faith as faith."104 Former president Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized this when he commented that no political figure would think of not including some "God stuff' in speeches.105 Americans are supposed to believe without question and know enough not to think too deeply about these issues. This is a habitual religion, a mechanical religion, a convenient religion. It is a faith to which all are expected to give reverent assent, but one that will not otherwise interfere with people's personal lives. It is a religion of unthinking, automatic habit. AN INTEGRATING FRAMEWORK FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION Even though scholars have offered thousands of discussions and research studies in the psychology of religion for over a century, to many critics our knowledge appears much more chaotic than scientific because of its seeming lack of structure. The scientific venture demands a conceptual organization of research under the direction of a theory. We have reviewed some broad formulations that attempt to coordinate all aspects of the psychology of religion. Unfortunately, the likelihood is that no one theory will ever completely suffice to explain this complex realm. Though many formulations may be necessary to comprehend religious expression, belief, motivation, cognition, development, and so forth, we hope to suggest some guidelines for psychological thinking about and investigation into religious behavior. The first step is to put this into its sociocultural context The Ever-Present and Always Influential Context The word "context" implies something external, and we must recognize that religion has always been a powerful force in every known culture. On this level, the task of understanding is left to the historians, anthropologists, and sociologists. They tell us that religion is taught

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

intentionally, actively, formallyand, just as influentially, passively, subtly, and informally. It infuses virtually every human setting and activity. Some people may reject "the faith of their fathers," but most accept it with variations that reflect individual experience in a climate of social change. Let us not, however, forget the study of twins from the University of Minnesota that implied the possibility of some genetic and biological potential. The psychology of personal faith may take us further than we expect. Biology notwithstanding, there can be no question that parents and significant others are models for children during their formative years, and that these influences continue to be important regardless of how old the children become. They exemplify for each individual how religion functions. These lessons may have taught that faith is something that fills gaps, such as for personal problem solving (especially during crises). Or they may have taught that faith is a source of control for parents to keep children in line, and politicians to squelch dissent. This vengeful deity responds to sin and wrongdoing mercilessly. In contrast, faith may have been represented as a positive force. Images of a loving and forgiving God support an open mind, the value of different kinds of people, and a world that is to be appreciated. Faith becomes a search for the truth and a life that can be cherished in its potential richness. In all probability, the religion that pervades people's lives has some elements that are positive and others that are negative. As researchers, we need to understand the psychology of both of these directions. Forms of Personal Faith: Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Quest Orientations We subscribe to the idea that religion is complex and multidimensional. To date, however, though many different forms and types of religion have been proposed, and all have been criticized, certain of these have been involved in a great deal of research. Readers should keep in mind that these types may be weak when it comes to their being understood psychologically. They may also imply value judgments suggesting "good" and "bad" religion from the standpoint of religionists and even psychologists. Despite these basic problems, the scheme proposed by Allport and his students, which identifies "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" forms, has proven quite fruitful in stimulating research.106 The partially parallel cognitivepersonality conception introduced by Alien and Spilka"committed" and "consensual" religious orientationsin part complements Allport's formulation, with apparently great overlap between the intrinsic and committed perspectives, but considerably less correspondence between the extrinsic and consensual forms.107 This was first noted by Fleck and followed up by Kirkpatrick, who pointed out that the most widely used extrinsic scales were themselves multidimensional, being composed of two subforms that he designated "personal well-being" and "social wellbeing."108 Short scales were developed to assess all of these tendencies. For our purposes, we often refer to "intrinsic/committed" and "extrinsic/consensual" forms of faith, but the terminology of "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" religious orientations is more firmly established, and is synonymously employed here. Intrinsic and extrinsic orientations represent cognitive, motive, and behavioral patterns. Some would prefer to group these referents under the category of personality. Table 1.3 indicates a number of the characteristics of these forms. Extrinsic religion is described as "strictly utilitarian: useful for the self in granting safety, social standing, solace and endorsement for one's chosen way of life."109 Intrinsic religion "regards faith as a supreme value in its own right. It is oriented toward a unification of being, takes seriously the commandment

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion TABLE 1.3. Characteristics of Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Quest Orientations

25

Intrinsic religion

Extrinsic religion

Quest religion

Devout; strong personal commitment; universalistic; ethical; stress on love of neighbor Unselfish, altruistic, humanitarian Framework for everyday life; fills life with meaning Faith of primary importance; accepted without reservations; creed is fully followed Faith of ultimate significance: 3 final good, supreme value, ultimate answer People seen as individuals High selfesteem Loving, forgiving God Open to intense religious experience; views death positively Feelings of power and competence Antiprejudice

Religion of convenience; called on in crisis, when needed Ethnocentric, exclusionistic, restricted to in-group, chauvinistic, provincial Expedient; not integrated into daily life Faith and belief are superficial; beliefs selectively held Utilitarian: means to other ends, is in service of other personal and social needs Views people in terms of social categoriessex, age, status Low or confused self-esteem Stern, punitive God Negative view of death; feelings of powerlessness, external control

Readiness to face existential questions; no reduction of complexity in life; resists traditional answers, but looks for "truth" Possibly "preintrinsic" religious conflict Self-criticism Religious doubt is positive Openness to change Concern with moral principles Antiprejudice, humanitarian May reflect more general conflict and anxiety, but constructively

of brotherhood, and strives to transcend all self-centered needs.... A religious sentiment of this sort floods the whole life with motivation and meaning."'10 Social psychologist C. D. Batson of the University of Kansas has also examined the intrinsic-extrinsic dimension. He claims that when it was first subjected to measurement, a very significant feature of Allport's original conception was overlookednamely, "a critical open-ended approach to existential questions." 111 After a number of attempts to measure what Batson termed "quest" religion, he recently settled on a three-dimensional framework; (1) readiness to face existential questions without reducing their complexity; (2) self-criticism and perception of religious doubt as positive; and (3) openness to change. Though each of these realms is evaluated by four items, the most recent form of the Quest scale combines all 12 items into one instrument."2 Now we await research that will tell us the extent to which this new measure contributes to our understanding of personal faith. One criticism of intrinsic religion is that when measured, it is not distinguished from simple orthodoxy or religiosity. People for whom their faith is very significant are likely to agree with the intrinsic items. Quest religion might offer us a possible means of making this distinction. Our reading of Allport and Batson suggests that a true intrinsic orientation could combine a quest perspective with the other elements now found in measures of intrinsic faith. For example, those scoring high on intrinsic religion and high on quest may be "true" intrinsicsthat is, if they also score low on extrinsic religion. Scoring high on intrinsic religion and low on quest may illustrate a simplistic religiosity or a narrow orthodoxy. This kind of thinking might also be used to identify "pure" questers or extrinsics. Initial work toward

26

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

this end has been reported, but it used an old and questionable form of the Quest scale, plus less refined indices of intrinsic and extrinsic religion than are available today."3 Obviously, more research is necessary to assess these possibilities. It may be argued that much vagueness still plagues all of these religious forms. Falling back on the scales themselves as operational definitions does not resolve the conceptual difficulties that underlie these instruments. Unhappily, criticisms come much more easily to the tongue and pen than positive recommendations do. While we search for the latter, and try to understand intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest approaches to religion, we must still recognize that the first two types are still "the most empirically useful definitions of religion so far."114 Still recognizing the problem of what intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest forms of faith really are, Pargament conducted a means-end analysis of these orientations; he concluded that all three are means to certain ends though as both means and ends they differ among themselves.115 In the first edition of this text, we noted that there were essentially no data on how intrinsic and extrinsic tendencies develop. The same is true for quest tendencies, and the situation has changed very little in the last decade.116 Maybe one of our readers will look into this problem before too long. We suspect that the overwhelming majority of people reveal differing degrees of intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest orientations toward religion. In some, one or another form may clearly dominate, but for most people the problem will be the extent to which they are inclined in one direction or another. The issue will still be denoting what these tendencies mean. It has also been shown that there are people who tend to be indiscriminately pro- or anti-religious; however, what once seemed to be simple assents to or rejections of any religious proposition are now regarded as complex perspectives.117 ATTRIBUTIONAL APPROACHES TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION We have already commented-that no single theory is likely to suffice for the entire realm of the psychology of religion. Those who study the development of religion may employ classical psychoanalytic views, object relations theory, a version of attachment theory, cognitive approaches, or perspectives derived from social psychology. 118 Many of these positions overlap to varying degrees, and whenever it is appropriate to do so, we utilize their ideas. However, most closely linked to social psychology are attributional approaches to religion; these constitute a theoretical perspective that has much to offer the psychological study of religion. Nearly 40 years ago, the noted psychologist Fritz Heider offered a theory about interpersonal relations in which he asserted that people try to explain social situations in terms of both the characteristics of those who interact within these settings and the nature of the environment itself.119 A process of organization, interpretation, and explanation takes place. Heider stated that "this ordering and classifying can be considered a process of attribution." 120 In other words, the process or processes of attribution are concerned with explanation primarily causal explanation about people, things, and events. These are expressed in statements and ideas that assign certain roles and influences to various situational and dispositional factors. For instance, we might attribute a person's getting cancer to being exposed to the smoking of coworkers, to the person's own smoking, or to the view that "God works in

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

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mysterious ways." All of these are attributions. Examining such meanings and their ramifications, attributional approaches became the cornerstone of cognitive social psychology, and were soon extended to explain how people understand emotional states and much of what happens to themselves and to others.121 Motivational Bases of Attributions: Meaning, Control, and SelfEsteem Needs The question of why people make attributions returns us to some basic motivational themes that underlie much religious thinking and behavior namely, to needs for meaning, control, and self-esteem. Though other activating elements are important, depending on the topic and situation, we see these three as central concerns for the psychology of religion. These are further developed in Chapter 11 when we discuss religion in relation to coping and adjustment. The three forms of personal faith discussed earlier intrinsic/committed, extrinsic/ consensual, and questcan also be viewed as motivationally concerned with meaning, control, and esteem. Allport's idea of intrinsic faith as a sentiment flooding "the whole life with motivation and meaning," and as a search for truth, is explicitly directed toward the attainment of ultimate meaning.122 Yalom terms this "cosmic" meaning as opposed to "terrestrial" meaning. The latter refers to the simple, everyday meanings necessary for ordinary living. Yalom suggests that one can have terrestrial meaning without cosmic meaning, but that the reverse cannot occur.123 Quest is a similar effort to attain answers to basic questions. Insofar as both of these may represent a kind of informational control, the element of mastery enters the picture. Extrinsic faith with its stress on utility explicitly deals with control. Further analyses of these religious orientations easily yield connections with these motivations. Relative to religion per se, Clark's position will suffice: "religion more than any other human function satisfies the need for meaning in life."12? In addition, there is much evidence that religious meaning is the prime component of faith that contributes to psychological well-being.125 Fundamentally, the attributional process is an effort to acquire new knowledge; in other words, it appears to be a first step in making things meaningful.126 In addition to a "need to know," a "need for mastery and control" enters the picture. One of the central figures in attribution theory and research, Harold Kelley, has stated that "the theory describes processes that operate as if the individual were motivated to attain a cognitive mastery of the causal structure of his environment."127 Especially when threatened with harm or pain, all higher organisms seek to predict and/or control the outcomes of the events that affect them.'23 This fact has been linked by attribution theorists and researchers with novelty, frustration or failure, lack of control, and restriction of personal freedom.129 It may be that people gain a "sense" of control by making sense out of what is happening, and being able to predict what will occur, even if the result is undesirable. Another motivational source of attributions that is buttressed by much research is self-esteem, Bulman and Wortman suggest that "people assign causality in order to maintain or enhance their self-esteem,"130 Self-esteem is also likely to be a consequence of the presence of meaning and a sense of control. The need for self-esteem, like the needs for meaning and mastery, has the ring of what we have called the "defensive/protective tradition." Our theoretical position asserts that attributions are triggered when meanings are unclear, control is in doubt, and self-esteem is challenged. There is, as suggested, much evidence that these three factors are interrelated. For example, research on the concept of alienation of which meaninglessness and powerlessness are major componentsstrongly affirms the

correspondence between feelings of control and perceptions of the world and one's situation as being understood and making sense.131 Likewise, selfesteem is a correlate of meaningfulness and control.132 Naturalistic and Religious Attributions Given these three sources of motivations for attributions, the individual may attribute the causes of events to a wide variety of possible referents (the self, others, chance, God, etc.). These may be classified into two broad categories: "naturalistic" and "religious." The evidence is that most people in most circumstances initially employ naturalistic explanations and attributions.133 Depending on a wide variety of situational and personal characteristics, there is a good likelihood of shifting to religious attributions when naturalistic ones may not satisfactorily meet the needs for meaning, control, and self-esteem,134 The task is to identify and comprehend those influences that contribute to the making of religious attributions. For example, we already know that the attributions of intrinsically religious individuals differ from those who are extrinsically oriented.135 In addition, Gorsuch and Smith have examined the bases of attributions to God.136 Spilka and Schmidt, and Lupfer and his associates, have looked at a number of personal and situational possibilities that affect religious and secular attributions.137 Hunsberger has focused on biases that enter this process.138 Even though there is much potential in this theoretical framework, it has only been applied in a few areas. Extending Attribution Theory Theories usually become more useful when they are combined with other theoretical speculations, and Wikstrom has joined our attributional framework with Sunden's role theory of religion.13S Though Sunden's theory is said to stress religious experience, it goes beyond this realm by pointing out that religion "psychologically speaking, seem[s] to provide models and roles for a certain kind .of perceptual 'set.'"140 A frame of reference is established in which the person's actions and cognitions are now structured by a religious role. We are told that "when the frame of reference is activated, stimuli which would otherwise be left unnoticed are not only observed but also combined and attributed to a living and acting 'other,' to God."141 Furthermore, "as a condition and as a result of the feedback from the roletaking experience ... [the self-perception]... can be seen as something that provides meaning and a feeling of identity, and strengthens self-esteem."142 Control is also brought into the picture; this shows how role and attribution approaches seem to parallel each other. There is an unexplored potential here. For example, one might suggest that an intrinsic orientation goes with adopting the religious role reference, whereas an extrinsic perspective fails to do so. van der Lans also shows how this role theory aids in predicting various aspects of religious experience.143 This could be coordinated with the work of Hood and his associates (see Chapter 6) and with the theory of Proudfoot and Shaver on attribution and religious experience.144 Clearly, there are both theoretical and research possibilities here. Our contention is that the attributional process, and that of role taking, are the products of interactions between external "situational factors" and internal "dispositional factors.''145 In other words, all thinking and behavior take place in an interpersonal, institutional, and sociocultural context of which situations are elements. We now identify some of the situational and dispositional influences that contribute to the making of religious attributions.

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

29

Situational Influences For many years, social-psychological and attribution research has emphasized the role of situational and environmental factors in the determination of thinking and behavior.146 This implies that most religious experiences, beliefs, and behaviors are subject to the vagaries of immediate circumstances. In other words, the information we obtain may be primarily a function of the settings in which people are studied and data collected. Without question, there is much evidence to support this approach. Schachter claims that the individual "will label his feelings in terms of his knowledge of the immediate situation." 147 Dienstbier has referred to this labeling as "emotion attribution theory," in order to explain how people define the causes of emotional states when ambiguity exists.148 Proudfoot and Shaver use the same "basic idea" to denote the bases of religious experience.149 The research does suggest that up to three-quarters of intense religious experiences occur when individuals are engaged in religious activities or in religious settings.150 Still, we must be cautious, for some studies have not shown the influence of religious situations on religious attributions. 151 There is much reason to believe that personal factors must also be considered.1" Since there is a need to understand attributions in general, rather than those that involve only emotion or ambiguity, Spilka and colleagues have called this approach "general attribution theory."153 We perceive situational influences as falling into two broad categories: "contextual factors" and "event character factors." The first category is concerned with the degree to which situations are religiously structured; the second stresses the nature of the event being explained. Contextual Factors Situations may be religiously structured by the locale in which activities or their evaluation take place (e.g., church or nonchurch surroundings; the presence of others who are known to be religious, such as clergy; or participation in religious activities, such as prayer or worship). The presence of such circumstances should elicit religious attributions, and, as noted above, this is obviously true when religious mystical or intense religious experiences occur- Certainly if other people are present and are religiously involved, their actions should aid in the selection of a religious interpretation. We might say that the "availability" of religious explanations is heightened by such factors. Work by Hood further demonstrates the importance of situational influences in the creation of nature and spiritual experiences.154 Contextual elements apparently increase the chances that those affected will attribute what occurs to the intervention of God. The salience of religion seems to be the key factor here: The more salient, important, noticeable, or conspicuous religion is in a situation, the more probable it is that religious attributions will be offered. This suggests what has been called the "availability hypothesis" or "availability heuristic." Religious influences in situations increase the likelihood of making religious associations or arousing religious ideas.155 One may argue that church settings in which religious attributions are not made may not be salient for religion. Research has shown that simply being present in a religious institution may not be enough.156 As centers for community activity, churches and synagogues perform a wide variety of functions. Event Character Factors Religious attributions may be affected by the nature or-character of the event being explained. A number of such influences are possible here: (1) the importance of what takes place;

(2) whether the event is positive or negative; (3) whether the event occurs to the attributing person or to someone else; and (4) the domain of the event (social, political, economic, medical, etc.). These factors have been shown to affect the intensity and frequency of making religious attributions, and we feel that they are influential to the extent that they enhance meaning, control, and self-esteem. Lupfer and his associates speak of "meaning belief systems."'" This concept stresses the adequacy of naturalistic versus religious explanations. As one set proves to be satisfactory, the alternative set should appear to be unsatisfactory, at least in terms of what the relative availability of explanations suggests. Another possibility that reintroduces questions of meaning and control concerns the degree of ambiguity and threat that events convey. For example, medical problems may be least understood and have the greatest potential for threat to life. As serious as economic disasters are, they seem to be comprehended more easily, because they leave the individual the possibility of starting over again. In other words, we hypothesize that situations involving high ambiguity and high threat may have the greatest likelihood of calling forth religious explanations- One problem is to determine the relative degrees of threat for the different domains. Event Importance. Considering the awe with which the power of God is regarded, people may perceive a role for the deity only when events of the greatest significance are involved. A disaster takes place, and the insurance company defines it as an "act of God." A young person unexpectedly dies, and it is said to be an expression of "God's will." People who win millions of dollars in lotteries commonly see the "hand of God" in their success. The unanticipated is often explained by phrases such as "God works in mysterious ways." Despite the fact that science has provided detailed naturalistic interpretations of birth, death, the reasons for fortune and failure, defeat, and victory, for most people there still remains a sense of the miraculous about the rare and unique events that can greatly change their lives. From a personal perspective, science and common sense often do not answer satisfactorily such questions as "Why now?", "Why me?", "Why at this time?", or "Why here?" If someone is suffering from a severe illness or a terminal condition, attributions and pleas to God seem quite appropriate. Instances of remission when all appeared hopeless are frequently regarded as signs of God's mercy, compassion, favor, or forgiveness. Research confirms this view that God becomes part of the "big picture" for the significant things that happen.158 Defining what is important has a very individual quality: Sports teams may pray for extra achievement in the "big" game, or gamblers may plead for divine intervention on a roll of the dice.159 Attributions are therefore a function of event importance, but the subjectivity of importance cannot be overlooked. Event Valence (Positivity/Negativity). If there is one tendency in making God attributions, it is that people rarely blame God for the bad things that happen to them. Attributions to God are overwhelmingly positive.160 Bulman and Wortman studied the reasons given by young people who became paraplegics because of serious accidents. They saw a benevolent divine purpose in what happened to them. As one victim put it, "God's trying to put me in situations, help me learn about Him and myself and also how I can help other people." 161 In another study, a cancer patient told the researchers, "God does not cause cancer.... Illness and grief do not come from God. God does give me the strength to cope with any and all problems."162 Rabbi Harold Kushner's well-known book When Bad Things Happen to Good People supports this idea that bad things should not be attributed to God.163

31 Even though positive attributions to God prevail, some people feel that they are being punished for their sins and thus may make negative attributions, but this is relatively rare. Clearly, the valence of events influences religious attributions, but we need to know more about why and under what circumstances positive or negative attributions are made to the deity. Personal Relevance of Events. There is little doubt that when events occur to any of us, they acquire much greater personal importance than when they happen to others. We can be deeply moved when we hear about a friend's or relative's serious illness, but when we ourselves suffer from such a condition, the question "Why me?" is suddenly of the greatest significance, and attributions to God are commonly made. If something particularly good happens to someone else, such as the winning of a great deal of money, we might say, "That's luck for you," and fee! happy for that person. The one benefited is more likely to claim that "God was looking out for me." The idea that personal relevance may elicit more religious attributions has gained support, but not consistently. It does seem to be involved in interactions with other variables, so additional research is called for to resolve these ambiguities.164 Event Domain. Certain domains appear "ready-made" for the application of secular understandings, while others seem more appropriate for invoking religious possibilities. We know that medical situations elicit more religious attributions than either social or economic circumstances; it may be that, historically and culturally, the latter realms have largely been associated with naturalistic explanations.165 In addition, religious institutions have been quite averse to glorifying money and wealth. References in the Bible to "filthy lucre" and the difficulty the rich will encounter in attempting to enter heaven leave little doubt that economic and spiritual matters are not regarded as harmonious. Without question, when people are in dire straits in any domain, it is not uncommon for them to seek divine help. The issue may, however, revolve about the clarity of meanings and the sense of control a person has in various situations. Religion may best fill the void when the person cannot understand why things are as they are, and control is lackingin other words, when ambiguity is great and threat is high. Situational Complexity and Event Significance. Reality tells us not only that any particular event includes all of the dimensions described above (importance, valence, personal relevance, and domain), but that event contexts are likely to vary greatly. It is also quite probable that event characteristics interact differently in different settings. It may be contended that each situation is a unique, one-time occurrence, and without question this is true. Still, there are commonalities across events and situations that need to be abstracted and categorized. Even withinsituation dimensions still remain to be discovered. An empirical scientific approach must keep these considerations in mind when theories such as that proposed here are employed to direct research. Though we somewhat arbitrarily distinguish situations and people, in life this really makes little sense. There are no situations or events that are meaningful without people to create such meanings. In the last analysis, person and situation are in transaction. It is a conceptual convenience to separate the two when in actuality they are inseparable. Many psychologists see their ultimate purpose as developing a psychology that treats the situation and the individual as a unit.166 Though this is a goal to which we may aspire, we are nevertheless forced to consider the individual in the same way in which we look at the situation.

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION Dispositional Influences

The Individual in Context In addition to the place of events and their contexts in attribution theory, it is obvious that human beings are an indispensable part of the attribution process; they make the attributions. The strong emphasis on individualism in North American society causes us to look at people as if they act independently of their surroundings. Just as events take place in contexts, persons always exist in their individual life spaces, and these vary with time and place. It may make a big difference if someone reacts in the morning before breakfast, or in the evening after supper. A religious experience that takes place in a church may have different repercussions from one that occurs when the individual is alone on a mountain top. Personal response is surprisingly situationally dependent. Personal Factors Individual characteristics may be termed "dispositional," and these fall into three overlapping categories: "background," "cognitive/linguistic," and, for lack of a better word, "personality." Since we are not in a position to denote constitutional and genetic influences or their effects, these three realms imply that people pattern their attributions regarding the causes and nature of events so that some explanations are much more congenial (meaning more "available" and/or "better-fitting") than other possibilities. This would hold true for people's selection of naturalistic as opposed to religious referents. Specifically, it would be true for their decisions as to whether positive or negative event outcomes are the results of their own actions or those of others; are due to fate, luck, or chance; or are attributable to the involvement of God. Research in this area is still needed, and slowly the challenge is being taken up.167 Background Factors. It is a psychological truism to state that people are products of their environment as far as most behavior is concerned. The overwhelming majority of individuals are exposed early in life to religious teachings at home and by peers and adults in schools, churches, and communities. These childhood lessons often persist throughout life, and are expressed by the use of religious concepts in a wide variety of circumstances. A common observation suggests that the stronger a person's spiritual background, the greater the chance that the person will report intense religious experiences and undergo conversion. 168 Frequency of church attendance, knowledge of a faith, importance of religious beliefs, and the persistence of religious ideas over many decades are correlates of early religious socialization.169 In other words, the more conservatively religious or orthodox the home and family in which a person was reared, the greater the person's likelihood of using religious attributions later in life. Cognitive/Linguistic Factors. Attributions depend on having available a language that both permits and supports thinking along certain lines. Bernstein has stated that "Language marks out what is relevant, affectively, cognitively, and socially, and experience is transformed by what is made relevant."170 Such relevance is well demonstrated by studies showing that religious persons possess a religious language and use it to describe their experience. There is reason to believe that the presence of such a language designates an experience as religious

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

33

instead of aesthetic or some other possibility.171 Meaning to the experiencing individual appears in part to be a function of the language and vocabulary available to the person, and this clearly relates to the individual's background and interests. There is much in the idea that thought is a slave of language, and the thoughts that breed attributions are clearly influenced by the language the attributor is set to use.172 Personality/Attitudinal Factors. The broad heading of personality/attitudinal factors includes a wide variety of dispositional factors that almost seem to defy classification. The language of personality is both difficult and complex, and different thinkers often employ different concepts to cover the same psychological territory, Schaefer and Gorsuch propose a "multivariate belief-motivation theory of religiousness" in an effort to integrate the often scattered ideas and research notions that associate traits and attitudes with religion.173 These scholars first recognize what they term a "superordinate domain" of religiousness, which consists of a number of subdomains.174 Their intention is to define the components of these latter spheres. The three they select for study are religious motivation, religious beliefs, and religious problem-solving style. Depending on the variables chosen to represent these subdomains, there may be room for argument as to whether one is looking at a cognitive or a motivational factor. Unhappily, most workers in the field have not been as rigorous as Gorsuch and his students where variable definition is concerned. For example, many "personality" factors have been examined in relation to religiousness. Among these are self-esteem, locus of control, the concept of a just world, and form of personal faith. All four seem to possess a motivational quality, yet the last two strongly involve belief systems. The Schaefer-Gorsuch theory implies a need to distinguish motivational from belief components, or [o identify a third, overlapping domain. Obviously, this work is in its infancy, but it suggests a potentially fruitful way of organizing a mass of somewhat disorganized, piecemeal findings into a coherent framework. To illustrate the meanings of personality/attitudinal dispositions relative to the making of religious attributions, let us briefly look at what we know about self-esteem, locus of control, belief in a just world, and form of personal faith. Self-Esteem. Research on self-conceptions has more than a 50-year history. For at least 30 years, many psychologists have focused on self-esteem the regard people have for themselves.175 The evidence suggests that this variable is quite basic to personality. One view is that attributions are often made to validate and enhance self-esteem; they perform a self-protective function.176 Needless to say, a fair number of researchers have examined self-esteem relative to religiosity. In general, high self-esteem relates to positive and loving images of God, and similarly to an intrinsic religious orientation.177 There may be a need here for consistency, which counters distressing dissonance, suggesting that those who have negative self-views perceive God as unloving and punitive.178 In other words, the person with such an opinion may be saying, "I am unlovable; hence God can't love me." Consistency further suggests that favorable God attributions ought to be associated with positive event outcomes as opposed to negative occurrences. This hypothesis has been supported.179 Self-esteem does not stand by itself. It is enmeshed in a complex of overlapping personality traits and religious concepts and measures, such as sin and guilt, as well as the nature of the religious tradition with which one is identified.180 This work indicates that different patterns of self-esteem and God attributions may be a function of a person's religious

heritage and its doctrines. If a prime role of attributions is to buttress self-esteem, we need to ask how religion performs such a function especially with traditions such as fundamentalism, which may seem quite harsh on the individual's effort to express self-regard. Locus of Control. Locus of control was initially conceptualized as a tendency to see events as either internally determined by the person or externally produced by factors beyond the control of the individual. This formulation has been extended and refined a number of times. External control was originally viewed as fate, luck, or chance until Levenson added control by powerful others and Kopplin brought in control by God.181 Pargament and colleagues recognized the complexity of control relationships relative to the deity, and developed measures to assess what they termed a "deferring" mode (an active God and a passive person), a "collaborative" mode (both God and the person are active), and a "selfdirective" mode (an active person and a passive God).18! These notions illustrate different patterns of attribution for control to the self and to God. In the deferring mode, an individual may pray, and having done that may attribute all the power to God: "It's in the hands of God." Those with a collaborative style are basically saying that both they and God have control: "God helps those who help themselves." Utilizing these coping styles relates to further attributions to the nature of God. Though the associations are stronger with the collaborative than with the deferring mode, the tendency for persons who adopt such control perspectives is to attribute generally positive qualities to the deity, along with their recognition of God's power.183 Although belief in supernaturalism affiliates with external control, Shrauger and Silverman found that "people who are more involved in religious activities perceive themselves as having more control over what happens to them."184 This sounds like intrinsic religion, or, at least, orthodoxy for this relationship Is strongest among fundamentalists. 185 Studying highly religious people, Hunsberger and Watson found that attributions of control and responsibility are made to God when outcomes are positive, a well confirmed finding, but when the result is negative, the tendency is to attribute the blame to Satan ("The Devil made me do it").186 Issues of control and to whom or what such are attributed have been extensively studied both within and outside of the psychology of religion. It is a concern that should be kept in mind throughout this book. Belief in a Just World. The Western religious heritage holds dear the view of Robert Browning that "God's in his heavenAll's right with the world!187 Idealistic as it seems, this view suggests that people in general feel that even if things appear tragic and unfair, somewhere and somehow there is an element of justice in such occurrences. Apparently, as human beings, we are reluctant to accept the notion of chance happenings. There must be a reason for everything, and that reason must make sense even if, like Job, we are unable to fathom it. Individualistically oriented Western culture directs us to seek answers to all dilemmas, to search for meaning. A common tendency is to make what is termed "the fundamental attribution error"the tendency to assign causality to the dispositional characteristics of specific beings and for many people, the deity becomes a very significant attributional referent when concern is with ultimate justice.188 Psychologist Melvin Lerner and his students have conducted much research on this notion that what happens to us and others is premised on a justice principlethe notion that we live in a "just world." The implication is that good people will be rewarded (if not in this life, then in the next), and, of course, bad people will get their just deserts too. Trust that the world is just increases with belief in God, frequency of church attendance, and self-

rated religiosity.'89 Studying health situations, Pargament and Hahn concluded that "attributions to God serve in helping people maintain a belief in a just world and to cope with the world."190 Form of Personal Faith. Earlier, we have discussed the three forms of faith that conceptually and operationally have dominated research in the psychology of religion. These are intrinsic (intrinsic/committed), extrinsic (extrinsic/consensual), and quest orientations toward personal religion. The research is quite conclusive that these inclinations represent very different ways of relating to one's faith and also of viewing and responding to the world.'91 They are therefore also associated with different patterns of attributions toward oneself, others, and religion. Unfortunately, we are in a much stronger position to discuss the intrinsic and extrinsic approaches than the quest approach, for even though the latter was formulated about two decades ago, the original form of the Quest scale proved to be unreliable and there was much argument concerning what it was measuring. 192 Batson and his students have recently produced a newer, better-defined, and more reliable instrument, and we await research with this measure that bears on issue of attributions. The earlier work should not be simply rejected, but it might be better to treat it as suggestive rather than definitive. Intrinsic/committed religionists attribute primarily positive characteristics to their deity, seeing God as loving, benevolent, and forgiving; this is also a deity that is involved in human affairs, one upon whom people can rely and trust at all times. 193 In contrast, as extrinsic and consensual tendencies increase, so do attributions to God as wrathful, stern, and vindictive. Self-attributions parallel those to the deity, in that intrinsics look upon themselves as empowered whereas extrinsics impute relative powerlessness to themselves. 194 The former seem to consider themselves more strongly in collaborative control relationships with their God; the latter are more inclined to place themselves in a deferring, low-power association with God.195 Attributions of trust in the deity are further reinforced when attitudes toward death are studied. The intrinsic/committed person tends to show a low fear of death, viewing this ultimate threat in terms of courage and a final reward. Extrinsics see death as involving pain, loneliness, failure, and isolation.196 This overall pattern continues when attitudes toward others are examined. Empathic concern has been found to be a positive correlate of intrinsic faith, whereas an extrinsic orientation has been linked to prejudice, separation, and objectionable feelings toward others.197 In like manner, extrinsics judge people in terms of their status, while intrinsics are concerned with them as individuals.198 In other words, intrinsic attributions to others tend to be positive; extrinsic attributions tend to be negative. Attributionally, we have (somewhat ideally) pictured opposites in their extreme forms. Extrinsic/consensual faith is tied to a perspective of oneself as relatively helpless. Extrinsics feel that the world is a dangerous place and that they must look out for "number one." God is sought mainly in crisis and times of trouble, but otherwise the deity is uninvolved in livingout of sight and out of mind. A reminder is, however, in order. Religious people are, as a rule, neither strictly intrinsic/committed nor strictly extrinsic/consensual; they invariably possess and express both orientations, and may do so equally or may lean more toward one approach than the other. We need to consider the nature of each situation where religion is relevant. It is nevertheless evident that intrinsics will see more circumstances as implying the meanings religion conveys than will extrinsics. In other words, we have been speaking of "pure" types when, in reality, trends are meant.

But what about those who seem to embrace a quest perspective? Despite some of the cautions noted earlier, Batson's work offers a number of possibilities that differentiate among intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest perspectives. Though controversial, these efforts raise many significant questions, and heighten our appreciation of the ways individuals approach issues of faith. Batson and his coworkers cite a number of questionnaire studies that show empathy and altruism relating positively to intrinsic religion. These imply self-attributions of care and concern on the part of intrinsics. A similar pattern was not found for those scoring high on the Quest scale. Batson et al. argue that intrinsics want to look compassionate but may not really be so, while questers do not have this need.199 The nonsignificant relationship found for the latter group suggests that they attribute social care and concern to themselves as often as nota tendency that is unclear as to its motivation. Are questers more modest or intrinsics less immodest? Might questers be more situationally oriented or context-sensitive than intrinsics? Rather than simply desiring to appear compassionate, intrinsics may have internalized a more demanding cross-situational moral code than questers may have. In terms of the definition of intrinsic faith offered earlier, they may be living their religion, not just adapting it to situations. Intrinsics may, of course, show greater situational insensitivity than questers; their possibly higher levels of commitment to principle might appear thus. Obviously these are questions for research to resolve. Even though Bolt and his coworkers did not include quest in their work on responsibility and nonspontaneous helping, their measure of the latter dealt with participation in specific altruistic activities. They found intrinsic inclinations related positively to such aiding behavior.200 Does this imply lying on the part of the intrinsics so that they might "appear helpful"? This does seem farfetched. In other research that involved volunteering, neither the Intrinsic nor the Quest scale showed any relationship with such a propensity; this hardly supports the "appearance" hypothesis.201 The complete lack of significant correlations across all variables for the Quest measure raises questions about the known unreliability of that early scale. Again, these are research questions. Batson rightly states that the real test is whether one helps or doesn't in situations where altruistic behavior seems appropriate.302 Once more, intrinsic faith is positively associated with helping others. Darley and Batson suggest that such helping is premised upon intrinsically oriented people's attributing the characteristics of concern and caring to themselves rather than to the needs of others for help (see Chapter 10).203 Those who have been subjected to the sometimes insensitive proselytizing zeal of people with missionary intent can easily believe this. In the case of helping, according to the Darley-Batson research, the preferred interpretation is that even though questers, like intrinsics, help, they do not attempt to do so if the potential recipient responds that such aid is not needed. The assumed quester's attribution is that the victim knows his or her own situation best; hence helper inaction does not appear to be a function of the aider's personal needs. One could, however, claim that intrinsics might feel that those requiring aid are more likely to deny such a need because in our society, people (especially males) are supposed to "stand on their own" and not be dependent. There may also be the feeling that someone clearly needing support might not be the best judge of the situation; hence extra effort to help could be appropriate. In a similar vein, the willingness of questers to trust the judgment of a person who appears to need help might not be due to believing a victim, but rather to relief on the potential helper's part that he or she will not be further inconvenienced. Though Batson and his students

The Psychological Nature and functions of Religion

37

have conducted a number of studies to support their interpretation, this issue still remains unresolved.204 There can be little doubt that the concept of quest religion merits additional study, especially with the new measures that have been developed. Different attributional patterns are implied by the intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest forms of personal faith discussed here. Ail three present theoretical difficulties that can only be resolved by the research process, and there is obviously still much to do. Using similar logic, Batson and colleagues have researched personal faith in relation to prejudice. Where low prejudice has been associated with an intrinsic orientation, this has also been viewed as motivated by a desire to appear unprejudiced. In contrast, evidence that the quest outlook is tied to tolerance is perceived as a genuine aversion to prejudice and discrimination, and hence also to negative stereotyping. To fully appreciate the nuances of this work, readers should examine the arguments presented by Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis. They recognize, however, that to date definitive answers in this realm are also Jacking.205 OVERVIEW This chapter has been concerned with the basic problems and issues that the psychology of religion confronts. Unhappily, over a century's worth of thinking and research in this area has not resolved the most fundamental of questionsnamely, those involved with the definition of religion. Indeed we have avoided direct confrontation with this matter. Our interest is focused on the psychological and especially the social-psychological relationship of people with their faith, however it is conceived. Given such a focus, religious thinking and behavior have been shown to be very complex, multidimensional phenomena. Though many schemes exist, we have selected for emphasis three forms that have been extensively involved in empirical researchnamely, Allport's intrinsic and extrinsic orientations, and Batson's quest approach. Our search for the motivational basis of religion has taken us to four broad traditions. The classical instinct heritage has been shown to be a dead end. Explaining one unknown in terms of other unknowns does not tell us anything about the psychological roots of religion. This tradition has opened a door to the field of sociobiology, which offers stimulating ideas but not data. Recent research on twins does suggest some biological possibilities; however, at this stage, until further work is done, this potential must be held in abeyance. There is considerable information suggesting the fruitfulness of what we term the defensive/protective approach, which claims that religion grows from weakness, deficiency, and shortcoming. People are said to turn to religion to gain solace, security, and the illusion of safety and certainty. For others (maybe only a minority), religion appears to sponsor psychosocial growth and personal enrichment. Their faith is an attempt to gain an even deeper and broader perspective on life, a reaching out toward truth, perfection, and integration; it is a struggle to understand where they fit in the scheme of things. There is no question that something much more prosaic and mundane is frequently involved in becoming "religious." Here we have simple, basic, unadorned social learning and habit. Religion is acquired in a cultural order that has maintained churches and their doctrines as central social, political, and moral forces throughout history. The result is that religion becomes an integral part of family life and child rearing. For most people it comes across as occasional churchgoing or dropping off the children for Sunday school, plus certain

38

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

beliefs and ideas that not only are not .questioned, but are simply not given much thought. Religion exists as an inviolable absolute that is just there. Recognizing that there are serious conceptual and operational problems plaguing the psychology of religion, we have emphasized the importance of theory. Though many different theories are necessary at this stage of our development, we have offered an attributional perspective that is derived from social psychology. In many instances, this can be applied to various forms of faith that have been widely researchednamely, the intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest orientations. These represent complex motivational and cognitive patterns that appear fruitful for understanding the psychological roles of religion in lifehow people deal with themselves, others, the world, and the religious system with which they are affiliated. We hope that we have provided a way of organizing thoughts about how a psychology of religion can help us to understand the complexities of human mental life within a religious context. This task perceives the individual's religious orientation to be a reflection of personal history, motivations, cognitions, and actions.
APPENDIX: STATISTICAL PROCEDURES AND CONSIDERATIONS As we have stated, this book emphasizes the empirical psychological (especially the social -psychological) study of religion. Reference is made throughout the book to various statistical procedures, the chief ones of which are "correlation" and "factor analysis." To aid readers, we offer a brief explanation of these techniques. Correlation Correlation determines the strength of a relationship between two variables. The statistical calculations result in a number called a "correlation coefficient." This number can range from-1.00 through 0 to +1.00. If the coefficients are in the 0 to -1.00 range, the relationship between the variables is said to be "negative." This means that as the values of one of the variables increases, the other decreases. In other words, the scores of the two variables are related in the opposite directions. For example, we know that extrinsic religion correlates negatively with selfesteem, so a low score in extrinsic religion goes with a high score on seif-esteem and vice versa. If the computed correlation coefficient is in the 0 to +1.00 range, the association between the variables is said to be "positive." Now, as the values of one of the variables increases, so do the values of the other variable. Stated differently, the scores of the two measures increase and decrease together. To illustrate, we know that perceptions of a loving God correlate positively with an intrinsic religious orientation. The higher people score on a scale of intrinsic faith, the more they will usually profess belief in a loving deity. The higher the correlation coefficient, meaning the closer it is to either -1.00 or +1.00, the stronger is the relationship between the two variables being studied. The importance of a coefficient is also a function of the size of the sample in which the relationship between the variables is calculated. For larger samples, smaller correlation coefficients will be "statistically significant." These can be looked up in a table, but all readers need to know now is that when a correlation is said to be statistically significant, even if it is numerically low and close to 0, it indicates an association that has a very low probability of arising on the basis of chance alone. When this probability is less than, say, 5% (or, as this is usually expressed, p < . 05), we are inclined to infer that the association (relationship) between the

39 variables is real; the variables are then assumed to be meaningfully related. In other words, if intrinsic faith and the likelihood of having a religious mystical experience are positively correlated (e.g., .40), and the sample is large enough for the researcher to claim that this is a statistically significant correlation coefficient, we are very likely to infer that the more a person is intrinsically religious, the greater the chance that the person has had or will have in the future a religious mystical experience. Correlations are important, for they imply prediction. Using the appropriate formulas, the sophisticated researcher can use the correlation coefficient to predict the values of one variable when the scores on the other variable are available. Of course, the higher the correlation coefficient, the stronger the predictions that can be made. Finally, we must state that if a correlation is not statistically significant, the two variables are considered to be "independent" of each other. No meaningful relationship is said to exist. Factor Analysis Factor analysis is a very complex statistical procedure that is often used to simplify correlational data. If we have a very large number of variables, it may be necessary to clarify the findings by using factor analysis. Consider first a simple situation with three variables. Variable A is correlated with variable B, which in turn is correlated with variable C. In turn, this last measure is also correlated with A. So we have three variables and, in this instance, three correlation coefficients. (Readers should not assume that the number of variables equals the number of correlations, even though it is true in this example.) The formula for the number of correlations is actually n( n 1)12, where n is the number of variables. In this case, n = 3, and our formula results in 3(3 - l)/2 or 6/2 = 3. Suppose, however, we have 50 variables. This would result in 50(49)/2 = 1,225 intercorrelations, and making sense out of such a massive array or matrix of coefficients would be extremely difficult or indeed impossible without factor analysis. Fortunately, today we have computers to do the complex calculations that will explain the large number of correlations by a much smaller number of "factors." It is possible that 5, 10, or 20 factors might result from the analysis of the 1,225 correlations among the 50 variables noted above. The findings would indeed become much clearer. This approach was used by a number of the researchers whose various dimensions of religion have been given in Table 1.1. Other Considerations: Reliability and Validity Since we use questionaires to a very great extent in our work, there must be some assurance that these really accomplish what we intend them to. Unfortunately, there are some very basic arguments about the possible discrepancy between "real life" and what the inventories tell us. Though we are unable to respond to this issue in detail, we do have reason to believe that our questionnaires usually get at the information we seek. This last inference deals with the concept of "validity": Does the test measure what it is supposed to measure? Probably the best way of determining this is by employing the test to confirm what theory says it should. There are also some other ways of approximating validity, and where possible these should be utilized. Validity presupposes "reliability" namely, consistency in the measure's assessment. This consistency may occur over time, or over the test items. Do they all measure the same thing? If a test is reliable, it may still not be valid, but not vice versa. Reliability has been termed "poor person's validity." If one cannot demonstrate reliability, the questionnaire must be invalid, so this is a good place to start. Reliability and validity can be evaluated by a variety of statistical procedures akin to correlation, so we may speak of reliability and validity coefficients. We would like the former to be above .75, but

for research purposes sometimes we go as low as .60 and then try to find out how to raise reliability. For example, we may write more test items, or edit and improve those in use. There are no guidelines for the size of validity coefficients. We simply start by hoping to have these attain statistical significance, and the higher they are, the better. When a questionnaire demonstrates at least reliability, we term it a "scale"; however, this label has other meanings in mathematics and the social sciences, so the interested reader should look to other sources and references for further information. Here we are concerned with the realm of "psychometrics," which treats issues of psychological measurement such as we have just mentioned. We have just touched on a few statistical and psychometric concepts among many that are pertinent to work in our area. To be a psychologist, especially an empirical researcher, means that one must become familiar with a wide variety of other statistical concepts and procedures. It is our hope that in this volume, our presentations will not be too abstruse and difficult. Readers may want to make a list of psychometric and statistical terms that appear in these pages, and check them out in greater depth. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. Paine (1897, p. 497). Cardinal Newman, quoted in Benham (1927, p. 238b). Lord Melbourne, quoted in Cecil (1966, p. 181). Bierce(1911/I967,p. 241). Luis Bunuel, quoted in Rogers (1983, p. 175). Wilde (1895/1965, Act 1, p. 35). Spilka(1970, 1976). Tillich(1957,p. ix). Tillich(1957,p. ir). Yinger(1967, p. 18) Yinger(1970). Coe(1916, p. 13). Dresser (1929, p. 441). Nottingham (1954). Conn (1962). Mills (1959, p. 3). Muller (1889, p, 188). Emphasis added to stress Muller's use of individual terms. Clark (1958, p. 22). Emphasis in original. James (1902/1985, p. 29). Williams (1962, p. 8); Clark (1958, p. 23). Ames (1910, p. viii). Emphasis added. Wiemanand Westcott-Wieman (1935, p. 29). Fromm (1950, p. 21). Emphasis added. Gibran(1923, p. 88). Yinger(1970, p. 33). Chave(1939). Brown (1962); Clock (1962); Maranell (1974). J.Wilson (1978, p. 442). Verbit(1970). Verbit(1970,p.24). Kirkpatrick and Hood (1990). Roof (1993). Benson and Williams (1982). Bums (1994). RoofandPerkins(1975, p. 111).

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

41

36. Le Boil (1903). 37. Trotter (1919). 38. Bernard (1924). 39. McDougall{1909). 40. Hardy (1913). 41. Bernard (1924). 42. Dresser (1929, p. 185). 43. Ostow and Scharfstein (1954, p. 155). 44. Ostow and Scharfstein (1954, p. 37). 45. E.O.Wilson(I978,p. 16). 46. E. O.Wilson (1978, p. 172). 47. E.G. Wilson (1978, p. 3.) 48. E. O. Wilson (1978, p. 175). 49. E.G. Wilson (1978, p. 177). 50. Burhoe (1979, p. 157). For further discussions of this issue, see Austin (1980); Batson (1983); Campbell (1975). 51. Waller, Kojetin, Bouchard, Lykken, and Tellegen (1990, p. 140). 52. Wenegrat (1990). 53. Flaveil (1963, p. 36). 54. Elkind(1970). 55. Elkind(1970,p.37). 56. Oser and Gmunder (1984/1991, p, 4). 57. Skinner (1953). See especially Chap. 23. "Religion." 58. Feuerbach(1967, p. 26). 59. Leuba(1921,p. 81). 60. Gross, L-(1982, p. 242). 61. A vast literature supports this contention. See the following for an introduaion: Acklin, Brown, and Mauger (1983); Johnson and Spilka (1991); Krause (1986); Krause and Van Tranh (1989); Mclntosh, Silver, and Wortman (1989); O'Brien (1982); Yates, Chalmer, St, James, Follansbee, and McKegney (1931). 62. Dewey. (1929, p. 3). 63. Royce(1912, p. 44); Johnson (1959, p. 200). 64. Dunlap (1925, p. 99). Emphasis in original. 65. Freud (1927/1961, p. 22). 66. Kilng(1979,p.97). 67. Bierce(1911/1967,p.241). 68. Stace(1960, p. 543). 69. Stace(1960,p.547). 70. HalIandLindsay(1978). 71. Nunn(1964). 72. Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975); Clark (1929); Starbuck (1899). 73. Mowrer (1961); Fairchild (1971). 74. Herbert (1965, p. 506). 75. Clock (1964). 76. Clock (1964, p. 27). 77. WaltersandBradley(1971). 78. Spilka, Brown, and Cassidy (1993). 79. Hsu (1952, p. 133). 80. Goldstein(1939);Maslow(1954). 81. Maslow(1964,p.xii). 82. Maslow(1964,p.26). 83. Browning (1975, p. 132). 84. Bertocci(1958). 85. Johnson (1959, pp. 201-202). 86. I. W. Gardner (1978, p. 33). 87. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman (1935, p. 29). 88. Ellwood(1922,p.47). 89. Tillich(1957,p.4). 90. Maddi(1970,p. 137). 91. Nuttin (1962, pp. 247-250).

42 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

T H E PSYCHOLOGY OH RELIGION Nuttin {1962, p. 249). Emphasis in original. Tageson(1982,p. 186). Frankl (1955, 1963). Frankl (1969). Fabry (1968). Bulka (1979); Ungersma (1961). Einstein {1931, p. 357). Polanyiand Prosch (1975, p. 153). O'Dea(I961,p. 30). Skinner (1953). fames (1890/1950, Vol. I, p. 121). Beliah (1967); Bellah and Hammond (1980). Marty(1959,p.31). Lerner(1957, p. 704). Allport (1959); AHport and Ross (1967); Hunt and King (1971). Alien and Spiika (1967). Fleck (1981); Kirkpatrick (-1989). A]lport(1966, p: 455). Allport (!966, p. 455). Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993, p. 166). Batson and Schoenrade (1991a, 1991 b). Mclntosh and Spiika (1990). Gorsuch(198S, p. 210). Pargament (1992). Venab]e(I984). Kirkpatrick and Hood (1990, pp. 449-450); Pargament et al. (1987). Freud (1927/1961); Heimbrock (1991); Kirkpatrick (1992); McDargh (1983); Oser and Gmunder (1984/1991); Proudfoot and Shaver (1975); Spiika, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick (1985). Heider (1958). Readers should keep in mind that the relationship of someone with his or her God might be conceptualized in interpersonal terms. Heider (1958, p. 296). Fiske and Taylor (1991); Hewstone (1983a). Allport (1966, p. 455). Yalom(!980). Clark (1958, p. 419). Chamberlain and Zika (1992). Kruglanski, Hasmel, Maides, and Schwartz (1978); Vaiins and Nisbett (1971). Kel1ey(|967, p. 193). Emphasis added. Sdigman(I975). Berlyne (1960); Wong (1979); Wong and Weiner (1981); Wortman (1976). Bulrnan and Wortman (1977, p. 351). Dean (1961); Elmore (1962); Spiika (1976). Becker (1973); Davids (1955); Oken (1973); Seeman (1959). Lupfer, Brock, and DePaola (1992). Hewstone (19S3a); Spiika, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick (1985). Watson,Morris,andHood(1990a). Gorsuch and Smith (1983). SpilkaandSchmidt(1983);Lupferetal.(1992). Hunsberger (1983c). Wikstrom(1987). Wikstrom (1987, p. 391). Wikstrom (1987, p. 393). Wikstrom (1987, p. 396). van derLans( 1987). Proudfoot and Shaver (1975). Magnusson (1981, pp. 9-32). Ross and Nisbett (1991). Schachter(I964, p. 54). Dienstbier (1979).

The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205.

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Proudfoot and Shaver (1975). Spilka and Schmidt (1983). Lupferetal. (1992); Spilka and Schmidt (1983). Epstein and O'Brien (1985). Spilka, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick (1985). Hood (I977b). FiskeandTayior{1991). Spilka and Schmidt (1983). Lupferetal. (1992, p. 491). Spilka and Schmidt (1983). S. J. Hoffman (1992). Bulman and Wortman (1977); Johnson and Spilka (1991); Lupfer et al. (1992). Bulrnan and Wortman (1977, p. 358). Johnson and Spilka (1991). Remarks by respondent no. 30 to question 33. Kushner (1981). Lupferetal. (1992); Spilka and Schmidt (1983). Spilka and Schmidt (1983). Magnusson (1981); Rowe (1987). Bains (1983); Lupferetal. (1992); Schaefer and Gorsuch (1991). Clark (l929);Coe (1900); Starbuck (1899). McGuire{1992);Shand (1990);). Wilson (1978). Bernstein (1964), cited in Bourqueand Back (1971, p. 3). Bourque (1969); Bourqueand Back (1971). Carroli (1956). Schaefer and Gorsuch (1991). This use of the word "domain" does not refer To the same idea used earlier in our discussion of situational factors that affect the attributional research process. Wylie (1979). Hewstone, M. (1983b, p. 17). Benson and Spiika (1973); Hood (1992c); Masters and Bergin (1992). Benson and Spilka (1973). Spilka and Schmidt (1983); Lupfer et al. (1992). Hood (1992c). Levenson (1973); Kopplin (1976). Pargamentetal. (1988). Schaefer and Gorsuch (1991). Shraugerand SiJverman (1971, p. 15); see also Randall and Desrosiers (1980). Furnham (1982); Siivestri (1979); Tipton, Harrison, and Mahoney (1980). Hunsberger and Watson (1986). Browning (1841a/1895, p. 133). Fiske and Taylor (1991). . Rubin and Peplau (1973). Pargament and Hahn (1986). Batsonetal. (1993); Wulff (1991). Batson and Schoenrade (199ta). Spilka and Mullin (1977). Spilka and Mullin (1977); Spilka (1976). Pargamentetal. (1988). Kahoe and Dunn (1975); Magni (1972); Minton and Spilka (1976); Spilka, Stout, Minton, and Sizemore (1977). Bolt and Vermeulen (1986); Donahue (1985b); Watson, Morris, and Hood (1988). Spilka and Mullin (1977). Batsonetal. (1993). Bolt, Pyne, and Shoemaker (1984). Bolt and Vermeulen (1986). Batsonetal. (1993). Darley and Batson (1973). Batsonetal. (1993). Batsonetal. (1993).